Fort Mueller Cannot Be Said To Be A Pretty Spot, For It Is So Confined By The Frowning, Battlemented, Fortress-Like Walls Of Black And Broken Hills, That There Is Scarcely Room To Turn Round In It, And Attacks By The Natives Are Much To Be Dreaded Here.

We have had to clear the ground round our fort of the stones and huge bunches of triodia which we found there.

The slopes of the hills are also thickly clothed with this dreadful grass. The horses feed some three or four miles away on the fine open grassy country which, as I mentioned before, surrounds this range. The herbage being so excellent here, the horses got so fresh, we had to build a yard with the tea-tree timber to run them in when we wanted to catch any. I still hope rain will fall, and lodge at Elder's Creek, a hundred miles to the west, so as to enable me to push out westward again. Nearly every day the sky is overcast, and rain threatens to fall, especially towards the north, where a number of unconnected ridges or low ranges lie. Mr. Tietkens and I prepared to start northerly to-morrow, the 20th, to inspect them.

We got out in that direction about twenty miles, passed near a hill I named Mount Scott*, and found a small creek, but no water. The country appeared to have been totally unvisited by rains.

We carried some water in a keg for ourselves, but the horses got none. The country passed over to-day was mostly red sandhills, recently burnt, and on that account free from spinifex.

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