Gosse had come down south
through the regions, and to the watering places which I discovered in
my former journey. He had evidently gone south to the Mann range, and
I expected soon to overtake him. I had now travelled four hundred
miles to reach this mount, which, when I first saw it, was only
seventy-five or eighty miles distant.

The appearance of this mountain is marvellous in the extreme, and
baffles an accurate description. I shall refer to it again, and may
remark here that it is formed of several vast and solid, huge, and
rounded blocks of bare red conglomerate stones, being composed of
untold masses of rounded stones of all kinds and sizes, mixed like
plums in a pudding, and set in vast and rounded shapes upon the
ground. Water was running from the base, down a stony channel, filling
several rocky basins. The water disappeared in the sandy bed of the
creek, where the solid rock ended. We saw several quandongs, or native
peach-trees, and some native poplars on our march to-day. I made an
attempt to climb a portion of this singular mound, but the sides were
too perpendicular; I could only get up about 800 or 900 feet, on the
front or lesser mound; but without kites and ropes, or projectiles, or
wings, or balloons, the main summit is unscaleable. The quandong fruit
here was splendid--we dried a quantity in the sun. Some very beautiful
black and gold, butterflies, with very large wings, were seen here and
collected. The thermometer to-day was 95 degrees in the shade. We
enjoyed a most luxurious bath in the rocky basins. We moved the camp
to softer ground, where there was a well-grassed flat a mile and a
half away. To the east was a high and solitary mound, mentioned in my
first journal as ranges to the east of Mount Olga, and apparently
lying north and south; this is called Ayers' Rock; I shall have to
speak of it farther on. To the west-south-west were some pointed
ridges, with the long extent of the Mann Ranges lying east and west,
far beyond them to the south.

The appearance of Mount Olga from this camp is truly wonderful; it
displayed to our astonished eyes rounded minarets, giant cupolas, and
monstrous domes. There they have stood as huge memorials of the
ancient times of earth, for ages, countless eons of ages, since its
creation first had birth. The rocks are smoothed with the attrition of
the alchemy of years. Time, the old, the dim magician, has
ineffectually laboured here, although with all the powers