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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 465 of 524
Words from 125124 to 125391
of 141354
