We Are Now Fifty Miles From Fort Mueller, And The Distant Ranges Seemed Even Farther Away Than That.

Moving north, we went over a mass of open-rolling sandhills with triodia, and that other abominable plant I call the sage-bush.

In appearance it is something like low tea-tree, but it differs entirely from that family, inasmuch as it utterly abhors water. Although it is not spiny like the triodia, it is almost as annoying, both to horse and man, as it grows too high for either to step over without stretching, and it is too strong to be easily moved aside; hence, horse-tracks in this region go zigzag.

At thirty-five miles the open sandhills ceased, and scrubs came on. It was a cool and cloudy day. We passed through a few groves of the pretty desert oak-trees, which I have not seen for some time; a few native poplars and currajongs were also seen to-day. The horses wandered a long way back in the night.

After travelling fifteen miles, we were now rapidly approaching the range, and we debouched upon a eucalyptus flat, which was covered with a beautiful carpet of verdure, and not having met with gumtrees for some time, those we saw here, looked exceedingly fine, and the bark dazzling white. Here we found a clay crab-hole. These holes are so-called in parts of Australia, usually near the coasts, where freshwater crabs and crayfish bury themselves in the bottoms of places where rain water often lodges; the holes these creatures make are tubes of two, three, or four feet deep, whose sides and bottom are cemented, and which hold water like a glass bottle; in these tubes they remain till rain again lodges above, when for a time they are released. The crab-hole we found contained a little water, which our horses drank with great avidity. The range was now only six or seven miles off, and it stood up bold and abrupt, having steep and deep gorges here and there, in its southern front. It was timberless and whitish-looking, and I had no doubt of finding water at it. I was extremely annoyed to discover that my field glasses, an excellent pair, had been ripped off my saddle in the scrubs, and I should now be disappointed in obtaining any distant view from the summit.

"They were lost to the view like the sweet morning's dew; They had been, and were not, was all that I knew."

From the crab-hole, in seven miles we reached a gorge in the mountain side, travelling through scrub, over quartz, pebbly hills, and occasional gum flats, all trending west, probably forming a creek in that direction.

In the gorge facing us we could discover a glittering little thread of water pouring down in a cascade from the top of the mountain into the gorge below, and upon reaching it we found, to our great delight, that we were upon the stony bank of a beautiful and pellucid little stream, whose almost invisibly bright water was so clear that not till our horses splashed it up with their feet could we quite realise this treasure trove.

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