The Day Was Delightful; The Thermometer Registered Only 76 Degrees In The Shade.

I had had a very poor breakfast, and now had an excellent appetite for all the dinner I could

Command, and I could not help thinking that there is a great deal of sound philosophy in the Chinese doctrine, That the seat of the mind and the intellect is situate in the stomach.

Starting again and gaining a rise in the dense ocean of scrub, I got a sight of the mountain, whose appearance was most wonderful; it seemed so rifted and riven, and had acres of bare red rock without a shrub or tree upon it. I next found myself under the shadow of a huge rock towering above me amidst the scrubs, but too hidden to perceive until I reached it. On ascending it I was much pleased to discover, at a mile and a half off, the gum timber of a creek which meandered through this wilderness. On gaining its banks I was disappointed to find that its channel was very flat and poorly defined, though the timber upon it was splendid. Elegant upright creamy stems supported their umbrageous tops, whose roots must surely extend downwards to a moistened soil. On each bank of the creek was a strip of green and open ground, so richly grassed and so beautifully bedecked with flowers that it seemed like suddenly escaping from purgatory into paradise when emerging from the recesses of the scrubs on to the banks of this beautiful, I wish I might call it, stream.

Opposite to where I struck it stood an extraordinary hill or ridge, consisting of a huge red turtle back having a number of enormous red stones almost egg-shaped, traversing, or rather standing in a row upon, its whole length like a line of elliptical Tors. I could compare it to nothing else than an enormous oolitic monster of the turtle kind carrying its eggs upon its back. A few cypress pine-trees grew in the interstices of the rocks, giving it a most elegant appearance. Hoping to find some rock or other reservoir of water, I rode over to this creature, or feature. Before reaching its foot, I came upon a small piece of open, firm, grassy ground, most beautifully variegated with many-coloured vegetation, with a small bare piece of ground in the centre, with rain water lying on it. The place was so exquisitely lovely it seemed as if only rustic garden seats were wanting, to prove that it had been laid out by the hand of man. But it was only an instance of one of Nature's freaks, in which she had so successfully imitated her imitator, Art. I watered my horse and left him to graze on this delectable spot, while I climbed the oolitic's back. There was not sufficient water in the garden for all my horses, and it was actually necessary for me to find more, or else the region would be untenable.

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