s the north, where a number of unconnected ridges or low ranges
lie. Mr. Tietkens and I prepared to start northerly to-morrow, the
20th, to inspect them.

We got out in that direction about twenty miles, passed near a hill I
named Mount Scott*, and found a small creek, but no water. The country
appeared to have been totally unvisited by rains.

We carried some water in a keg for ourselves, but the horses got none.
The country passed over to-day was mostly red sandhills, recently
burnt, and on that account free from spinifex. We travelled about
north, 40 degrees east. We next steered away for a dark-looking,
bluff-ending hill, nearly north-north-east. Before arriving at it we
searched among a lot of pine-clad hills for water without effect,
reaching the hill in twenty-two miles. Resting our horses, we ascended
the hill; from it I discovered, with glasses, that to the north and
round easterly and westerly a number of ranges lay at a very
considerable distance. The nearest, which lay north, was evidently
sixty or seventy miles off. These ranges appeared to be of some
length, but were not sufficiently raised above the ocean of scrubs,
which occupied the intervening spaces, and rose into high and higher
undulations, to allow me to form an opinion with regard to their
altitude. Those east of north appeared higher and farther away, and
were bolder and more pointed in outline. None of them were seen with
the naked eye at first, but, when once seen with the field-glasses,
the mind's eye would always represent them to us, floating and faintly
waving apparently skywards in their vague and distant mirage. This
discovery instantly created a burning desire in both of us to be off
and reach them; but there were one or two preliminary determinations
to be considered before starting. We are now nearly fifty miles from
Fort Mueller, and the horses have been all one day, all one night, and
half to-day without water. There might certainly be water at the new
ranges, but then again there might not, and although they were at
least sixty miles off, our horses might easily reach them. If,
however, no water were found, they and perhaps we could never return.
My reader must not confound a hundred miles' walk in this region with
the same distance in any other. The greatest walker that ever stepped
would find more than his match here. In the first place the feet sink
in the loose and sandy soil, in the second it is densely covered with
the hideo