in
the beginning, has there remained, while the aged Mount Olga has been
thrown up subsequently from below. Mount Olga is the more wonderful
and grotesque; Mount Ayers the more ancient and sublime. There is
permanent water here, but, unlike the Mount Olga springs, it lies all
in standing pools. There is excellent grazing ground around this rock,
though now the grass is very dry. It might almost be said of this, as
of the Pyramids or the Sphinx, round the decay of that colossal rock,
boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. This
certainly was a fine place for a camp. The water was icy cold; a
plunge into its sunless deeps was a frigid tonic that, further west in
the summer heats, would have been almost paradisiacal, while now it
was almost a penalty. The hill or range further east seems farther
away now than it did from Mount Olga. It is flat on the summit, and no
doubt is the same high and flat-topped mount I saw from the Sentinel
in August last. We are encamped in the roomy cave, for we find it much
warmer than in the outer atmosphere, warmth being as great a
consideration now, as shade had formerly been.

We started for the flat-topped hill on the 11th of June. The country
was all extremely heavy sandhills, with casuarina and triodia; we had
to encamp among them at twenty-three miles, without water. The next
morning Formby knocked up, and lay down, and we had to leave him in
the scrub. To-day we got over thirty miles, the hill being yet seven
or eight miles off. It looks most repulsive, so far as any likelihoods
of obtaining water is concerned. The region was a perfect desert,
worse for travelling, indeed, than Gibson's Desert itself. Leaving
Jimmy with the horses, Mr. Tietkens and I rode over to the mount, and
reached it in seven miles. At a mile and a half from it we came to an
outer escarpment of rocks; but between that and the mount more
sandhills and thick scrub exist. We rode all round this strange
feature; it was many hundreds of feet high, and for half its height
its sides sloped; the crown rested upon a perpendicular wall. It was
almost circular, and perfectly flat upon the top, apparently having
the same kind of vegetation and timber upon its summit as that upon
the ground below. I don't know that it is accessible; it seemed not; I
saw no place, and did not attempt to ascend it.

To the north, and about fifteen miles away, the not yet ended Amadeus
Lake was visible. To the east timbe