We Steered For The Singular Cone In Advance.

Most of the hills, however, of the Anthony Range were flat-topped, though many tent-shaped ones exist also.

I ascended the cone in ten miles, west of north-west from camp. The view displayed hills for miles in all directions, amongst which were many bare rocks of red colour heaped into the most fantastically tossed mounds imaginable, with here and there an odd shrub growing from the interstices of the rocks; some small miniature creeks, with only myal and mulga growing in them, ran through the valleys - all of these had recently been running. We camped a mile or two beyond the cone in an extremely pretty and romantic valley; the grass was green, and Nature appeared in one of her smiling moods, throwing a gleam of sunshine on the minds of the adventurers who had sought her in one of her wilderness recesses. The only miserable creature in our party was the lame horse, but now indeed he had a mate in misfortune, for we found that another horse, Giant Despair, had staked himself during our day's march, though he did not appear lame until we stopped, and his hobbles were about to be put on. Mr. Tietkens extracted a long mulga stick from his fetlock: neither of the two staked horses ever became sound again, although they worked well enough. In the night, or rather by morning (daylight), the thermometer had fallen to 30 degrees, and though there was a heavy dew there was neither frost nor ice.

We now passed up to the head of the picturesque valley, and from there wound round some of the mounds of bare rocks previously mentioned. They are composed of a kind of a red conglomerate granite. We turned in and out amongst the hills till we arrived at the banks of a small creek lined with eucalyptus or gum-trees, and finding some water we encamped on a piece of beautiful-looking country, splendidly grassed and ornamented with the fantastic mounds, and the creek timber as back and fore grounds for the picture. Small birds twittered on each bough, sang their little songs of love or hate, and gleefully fled or pursued each other from tree to tree. The atmosphere seemed cleared of all grossness or impurities, a few sunlit clouds floated in space, and a perfume from Nature's own laboratory was exhaled from the flowers and vegetation around. It might well be said that here were

"Gusts of fragrance on the grasses, In the skies a softened splendour; Through the copse and woodland passes Songs of birds in cadence tender."

The country was so agreeable here we had no desire to traverse it at railway speed; it was delightful to loll and lie upon the land, in abandoned languishment beneath the solar ray. Thirty or forty miles farther away, west-north-westward, other and independent hills or ranges stood, though I was grieved to remark that the intermediate region seemed entirely filled with scrub. How soon the scenery changes! Travelling now for the new hills, we soon entered scrubs, where some plots of the dreaded triodia were avoided. In the scrubs, at ten miles we came upon the banks of a large gum-timbered creek, whose trees were fine and vigorous. In the bed we found a native well, with water at no great depth; the course of this creek where we struck it, was south-south-east, and we travelled along its banks in an opposite, that is to say, north-north-west direction. That line, however, took us immediately into the thick scrubs, so at four miles on this bearing I climbed a tree, and saw that I must turn north to cut it again; this I did, and in three miles we came at right angles upon a creek which I felt sure was not the one we had left, the scrub being so thick one could hardly see a yard ahead. Here I sent Jimmy Andrews up a tree; having been a sailor boy, he is well skilled in that kind of performance, but I am not. I told him to discover the whereabouts of the main creek, and say how far off it appeared. That brilliant genius informed me that it lay across the course we were steering, north, and it was only a mile away; so we went on to it, as we supposed, but having gone more than two miles and not reaching it, I asked Jimmy whether he had not made some mistake. I said, "We have already come two miles, and you said it was scarcely one." He then kindly informed me that I was going all wrong, and ought not to go that way at all; but upon my questioning him as to which way I should go he replied, "Oh, I don't know NOW." My only plan was to turn east, when we soon struck the creek. Then Jimmy declared if we had KEPT NORTH LONG ENOUGH, we would have come to it AGIN.

Though Jimmy was certainly a bit of a fool, he was not perhaps quite a fool of the greatest size. Little fools and young fools somehow seem to pass muster in this peculiar world, but to be old and a fool is a mistake which is difficult, if not impossible, to remedy. It was too late to go any farther; we couldn't get any water, but we had to camp. I intended to return in the morning to where we first struck this creek, and where we saw water in the native well. I called this the Krichauff. The mercury went down to 28 degrees by daylight the next morning, but neither ice nor frost appeared. This morning Mr. Tietkens, when out after the horses, found a rather deep native well some distance up the creek, and we shifted the camp to it. On the way there I was behind the party, and before I overtook them I heard the report of firearms.

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