range feelings in the breast of these two savages, who could never
before have seen civilized man, thus to have sat spectators and
overlookers of the every action of such incomprehensible beings as we
must have appeared; and the relation to their comrades of the wonders
they had witnessed could not have been to them a whit less marvellous
than the tales of the grey-headed Irish peasant, when he recounts the
freaks of the fairies, "whose midnight revels by the forest side or
fountain" he has watched intently from some shrub-clad hill.

COMMENCEMENT OF FIRST EXCURSION.

I started in the evening, accompanied by Corporal John Coles and Private
R. Mustard, both of the corps of Royal Sappers and Miners, and for a
short distance by two or three others of the party from the camp. We
moved up the ravine in which we were encamped in a nearly due south
direction, and after following this course about a mile turned up a
branch ravine to the left, bearing 87 degrees from the north.

CHARACTER OF THE SCENERY. GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENA.

The romantic scenery of this narrow glen could not be surpassed. Its
width at bottom was not more than forty or fifty feet, on each side rose
cliffs of sandstone between three and four hundred feet high and nearly
perpendicular; lofty paper-bark trees grew here and there, and down the
middle ran a beautiful stream of clear, cool water, which now gushed
along, a murmuring mountain torrent, and anon formed a series of small
cascades. As we ascended higher the width contracted; the paper-bark
trees disappeared; and the bottom of the valley became thickly wooded
with wild nutmeg and other fragrant trees. Cockatoos soared, with hoarse
screams, above us, many-coloured parakeets darted away, filling the woods
with their playful cries, and the large white pigeons which feed on the
wild nutmegs cooed loudly to their mates, and battered the boughs with
their wings as they flew away.

The spot I chose to halt at for the night was at the foot of a lofty
precipice of rocks, from which a spring gushed forth. Those who had
accompanied us from the camp now returned, leaving me and the two
soldiers alone and about to penetrate some distance into an utterly
unknown country. We were each provided with ten days' provisions and,
confident in the steadiness and courage of my men, I had not the
slightest anxiety--feeling that as long as we maintained a cool and
determined bearing the natives would make no attacks upon us tha