k: neither of the two staked horses ever became sound
again, although they worked well enough. In the night, or rather by
morning (daylight), the thermometer had fallen to 30 degrees, and
though there was a heavy dew there was neither frost nor ice.

We now passed up to the head of the picturesque valley, and from there
wound round some of the mounds of bare rocks previously mentioned.
They are composed of a kind of a red conglomerate granite. We turned
in and out amongst the hills till we arrived at the banks of a small
creek lined with eucalyptus or gum-trees, and finding some water we
encamped on a piece of beautiful-looking country, splendidly grassed
and ornamented with the fantastic mounds, and the creek timber as back
and fore grounds for the picture. Small birds twittered on each bough,
sang their little songs of love or hate, and gleefully fled or pursued
each other from tree to tree. The atmosphere seemed cleared of all
grossness or impurities, a few sunlit clouds floated in space, and a
perfume from Nature's own laboratory was exhaled from the flowers and
vegetation around. It might well be said that here were

"Gusts of fragrance on the grasses,
In the skies a softened splendour;
Through the copse and woodland passes
Songs of birds in cadence tender."

The country was so agreeable here we had no desire to traverse it at
railway speed; it was delightful to loll and lie upon the land, in
abandoned languishment beneath the solar ray. Thirty or forty miles
farther away, west-north-westward, other and independent hills or
ranges stood, though I was grieved to remark that the intermediate
region seemed entirely filled with scrub. How soon the scenery
changes! Travelling now for the new hills, we soon entered scrubs,
where some plots of the dreaded triodia were avoided. In the scrubs,
at ten miles we came upon the banks of a large gum-timbered creek,
whose trees were fine and vigorous. In the bed we found a native well,
with water at no great depth; the course of this creek where we struck
it, was south-south-east, and we travelled along its banks in an
opposite, that is to say, north-north-west direction. That line,
however, took us immediately into the thick scrubs, so at four miles
on this bearing I climbed a tree, and saw that I must turn north to
cut it again; this I did, and in three miles we came at right angles
upon a creek which I felt sure was not the one we had left, the scrub
being so