Australia Twice Traversed - The Romance Of Exploration, Through Central South Australia, And Western Australia, From 1872 To 1876 By Ernest Giles
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He Had Evidently Gone South To The Mann Range, And
I Expected Soon To Overtake Him.
I had now travelled four hundred
miles to reach this mount, which, when I first saw it, was only
seventy-five or eighty miles distant.
The appearance of this mountain is marvellous in the extreme, and
baffles an accurate description. I shall refer to it again, and may
remark here that it is formed of several vast and solid, huge, and
rounded blocks of bare red conglomerate stones, being composed of
untold masses of rounded stones of all kinds and sizes, mixed like
plums in a pudding, and set in vast and rounded shapes upon the
ground. Water was running from the base, down a stony channel, filling
several rocky basins. The water disappeared in the sandy bed of the
creek, where the solid rock ended. We saw several quandongs, or native
peach-trees, and some native poplars on our march to-day. I made an
attempt to climb a portion of this singular mound, but the sides were
too perpendicular; I could only get up about 800 or 900 feet, on the
front or lesser mound; but without kites and ropes, or projectiles, or
wings, or balloons, the main summit is unscaleable. The quandong fruit
here was splendid - we dried a quantity in the sun. Some very beautiful
black and gold, butterflies, with very large wings, were seen here and
collected. The thermometer to-day was 95 degrees in the shade. We
enjoyed a most luxurious bath in the rocky basins.
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