s we came upon some green grass, which the horses greedily
devoured. The country here is much better and more open. On mustering
the horses this morning, one was found to be dead lame, with a mulga
stake in his coronet, and as he could not travel we were forced to
remain at the camp; at least the camp was not shifted. This horse was
called Trew; he was one of the best in the mob, though then I had not
found out all his good qualities--he now simply carried a pack. Mr.
Tietkens and I mounted our horses and rode farther up the creek. The
channel had partly recovered its appearance, and it may be our old one
after all. Above the camp its course was nearly north, and a line of
low bluff-faced hills formed its eastern bank. The country towards the
new ranges looked open and inviting, and we rode to a prominent cone
in it, to the west-north-west. The country was excellent, being open
and grassy, and having fine cotton and salt bush flats all over it:
there was surface water in clay-pans lying about. I called this the
Anthony Range. We returned much pleased with our day's ride.

The nights were now agreeably cool, sometimes very dewy. The lame
horse was still very bad, but we lightened his load, and after the
first mile he travelled pretty well. We steered for the singular cone
in advance. Most of the hills, however, of the Anthony Range were
flat-topped, though many tent-shaped ones exist also. I ascended the
cone in ten miles, west of north-west from camp. The view displayed
hills for miles in all directions, amongst which were many bare rocks
of red colour heaped into the most fantastically tossed mounds
imaginable, with here and there an odd shrub growing from the
interstices of the rocks; some small miniature creeks, with only myal
and mulga growing in them, ran through the valleys--all of these had
recently been running. We camped a mile or two beyond the cone in an
extremely pretty and romantic valley; the grass was green, and Nature
appeared in one of her smiling moods, throwing a gleam of sunshine on
the minds of the adventurers who had sought her in one of her
wilderness recesses. The only miserable creature in our party was the
lame horse, but now indeed he had a mate in misfortune, for we found
that another horse, Giant Despair, had staked himself during our day's
march, though he did not appear lame until we stopped, and his hobbles
were about to be put on. Mr. Tietkens extracted a long mulga stick
from his fetloc