of any human creature, I must accept it without a sigh.

The night here was cold, the mercury at daylight being down to 24
degrees, and there was ice on the water or tea left in the pannikins
or billies overnight.

This place was so charming that I could not tear myself away. Mr.
Tietkens and I walked to and climbed up a high mount, about three
miles north-easterly from camp; it was of some elevation. We ascended
by a gorge having eucalyptus and callitris pines halfway up. We found
water running from one little basin to another, and high up, near the
summit, was a bare rock over which water was gushing. To us, as we
climbed towards it, it appeared like a monstrous diamond hung in
mid-air, flashing back the rays of the morning sun. I called this
Mount Oberon, after Shakespeare's King of the Fairies. The view from
its summit was limited. To the west the hills of this chain still run
on; to the east I could see Mount Ferdinand. The valley in which the
camp and water was situate lay in all its loveliness at our feet, and
the little natural trough in its centre, now reduced in size by
distance, looked like a silver thread, or, indeed, it appeared more as
though Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, had for a moment laid her
magic silver wand upon the grass, and was reposing in the sunlight
among the herbage and the flowers. The day was lovely, the sky serene
and clear, and a gentle zephyr-like breeze merely agitated the
atmosphere. As we sat gazing over this delightful scene, and having
found also so many lovely spots in this chain of mountains, I was
tempted to believe I had discovered regions which might eventually
support, not only flocks and herds, but which would become the centres
of population also, each individual amongst whom would envy me us
being the first discoverer of the scenes it so delighted them to view.
For here were:--

"Long dreamy lawns, and birds on happy wings
Keeping their homes in never-rifled bowers;
Cool fountains filling with their murmuring
The sunny silence 'twixt the charming hours."

In the afternoon we returned to the camp, and again and again wondered
at the singular manner in which the water existed here. Five hundred
yards above or below there is no sign of water, but in that
intermediate space a stream gushes out of the ground, fills a splendid
little trough, and gushes into the ground again: emblematic indeed of
the ephemeral existence of humanity--we rise out of the du