, and it was free from
ants. There was a long line of fine eucalyptus timber and an extensive
piece of ground covered with rushes, which made it look very pretty;
altogether it was a most desirable spot for an explorer's camp, and an
excellent place for the horses, as they soon got fat here. It is
impossible that I should ever forget Sladen Water or the Pass of the
Abencerrages: "Methinks I am as well in this valley as I have been
anywhere else in all our journey; the place methinks suits with my
spirit. I love to be in such places, where there is no rattling with
coaches, nor rumbling with wheels. Methinks here one may, without much
molestation, be thinking what he is, and whence he came; what he has
done, and to what the king has called him" (Bunyan). On the Queen's
birthday we bade it a last farewell, and departed for the east and
civilisation, once more. We now had the route that Mr. Tietkens and I
had explored in March--that is to say, passing and getting water at
all the following places:--Gill's Pinnacle, the Ruined Rampart,
Louisa's Creek, and the Chirnside. The country, as I have said before,
was excellent and good for travelling over. The crescent-shaped and
wall-like range running from the Weld Pass to Gill's Pinnacle, and
beyond it, I named the Schwerin Mural Crescent; and a pass through it
I named Vladimar Pass, in honour of Prince Vladimar, son of the
Emperor of Russia, married to the Princess of Schwerin. When we
reached the place where we first surprised the natives hunting, in
March, we made a more northerly detour, as our former line had been
through and over very rough hills, and in so doing we found on the 1st
of June another splendid watering-place, where several creeks joined
and ran down through a rocky defile, or glen, to the north. There was
plenty of both rock and sand water here, and it was a very pretty and
excellent little place. I called it Winter's* Glen, and the main creek
of the three in which it lies, Irving Creek. This water may easily be
found by a future traveller, from its bearing from a high,
long-pointed hill abruptly ending to the west, which I named Mount
Phillips. This is a very conspicuous mount in this region, being, like
many of the others named on this line, detached to allow watercourses
to pass northwards, and yet forming a part of the long northern wall,
of which the Petermann Range is formed. This mount can be distinctly
seen from Mount Olga, although it is seventy miles