- We returned to the creek in which we had encamped on the 16th,
and pitched our tents a little lower down, where some rich feed promised
our cattle a good treat.
Immediately after luncheon, I started again with
Charley down the creek, myself on horseback, but my companion on foot. It
soon became very rocky, with gullies joining it from both sides; but,
after two miles, it opened again into fine well-grassed lightly timbered
flats, and terminated in a precipice, as the others had done. A great
number of tributary creeks joined it in its course, but all formed
gullies and precipices. Many of these gullies were gently sloping
hollows, filled with a rich black soil, and covered with an open brush
vegetation at their upper part; but, lower down, large rocks protruded,
until the narrow gully, with perpendicular walls, sunk rapidly into the
deep chasm, down which the boldest chamois hunter would not have dared to
descend. I now determined to examine the country to the southward; and,
as it was late and my horse very foot-sore, I remained for the night at
the next grassy flat, and sent Charley back to order my companions to
remove the camp next morning as far down the creek as possible, in order
to facilitate the examination, which, on foot, in this climate, was
exceedingly exhausting.
Nov. 19. - I appeased my craving hunger, which had been well tried for
twenty hours, on the small fruit of a species of Acmena which grew near
the rocks that bounded the sandy flats, until my companions brought my
share of stewed green hide. We went about three miles farther down the
creek, and encamped in the dense shade of a wide spreading Rock box, a
tree which I mentioned a few days since. From this place I started with
Brown in one direction, and Charley in another, to find a passage through
the labyrinth of rocks. After a most fatiguing scramble up and down rocky
gullies, we again found ourselves at the brink of that beautiful valley,
which lay before us like a promised land. We had now a more extensive
view of its eastern outline, and saw extending far to our right a
perpendicular wall, cut by many narrow fissures, the outlet of as many
gullies; the same wall continued to the left, but interrupted by a steep
slope; to which we directed our steps, and after many windings succeeded
in finding it. It was indeed very steep. Its higher part was composed of
sandstone and conglomerate; but a coarse-grained granite, with much
quartz and felspar, but little mica and accidental hornblende, was below.
The size of its elements had rendered it more liable to decomposition,
and had probably been the cause of the formation of the slope. In the
valley, the creek murmured over a pebbly bed, and enlarged from time to
time, into fine sheets of water. We rested ourselves in the shade of its
drooping tea-trees; and, observing another slope about two miles farther,
went to examine it, but finding that its sandstone crest was too steep
for our purpose, we returned to mark a line of road from the first slope
to our camp.
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