Which would become the centres
of population also, each individual amongst whom would envy me us
being the first discoverer of the scenes it so delighted them to view.
For here were: -
"Long dreamy lawns, and birds on happy wings
Keeping their homes in never-rifled bowers;
Cool fountains filling with their murmuring
The sunny silence 'twixt the charming hours."
In the afternoon we returned to the camp, and again and again wondered
at the singular manner in which the water existed here. Five hundred
yards above or below there is no sign of water, but in that
intermediate space a stream gushes out of the ground, fills a splendid
little trough, and gushes into the ground again: emblematic indeed of
the ephemeral existence of humanity - we rise out of the dust, flash
for a brief moment in the light of life, and in another we are gone.
We planted seeds here; I called it Titania's Spring, the watercourse
in which it exists I called Moffatt's* Creek.
The night was totally different from the former, the mercury not
falling below 66 degrees. The horses upon being brought up to the camp
this morning on foot, displayed such abominable liveliness and
flashness, that there was no catching them. One colt, Blackie, who was
the leader of the riot, I just managed at length to catch, and then we
had to drive the others several times round the camp at a gallop,
before their exuberance had in a measure subsided.
