The Herbage Here Was Splendid.

Ants and burrs were very annoying, however; we have been afflicted with both of these animal and vegetable annoyances upon many occasions all through these regions.

There was a high, black-looking mountain with a conical summit, in the northern line of ranges, which bore north-westward from here. I named it Mount Aloysius, after the Christian name of Sir A.F. Weld, Governor of Western Australia. We had entered the territory of the Colony of Western Australia on the last day of September; the boundary between it and South Australia being the 129th meridian of east longitude. The latitude by stars of this camp was 26 degrees 9'. Leaving it early, we continued upon the same line as yesterday, and towards the same hill, which we reached in five miles, and ascended. It was nearly the most westerly point of the line of hills we had been following. The summit of this hill I found to consist of great masses of rifted stone, which were either solid iron or stone coated thickly with it. The blocks rang with the sound of my iron-shod boots, while moving over them, with such a musical intonation and bell-like clang, that I called this the Bell Rock. Mount Aloysius bore north 9 degrees west, distant about ten miles; here I saw it was quite an isolated range, as, at its eastern and western extremities, open spaces could be seen between it and any other hills.

CHAPTER 2.4. FROM 30TH SEPTEMBER TO 9TH NOVEMBER, 1873.

Native encampment. Fires alight. Hogarth's Wells. Mount Marie and Mount Jeanie. Pointed ranges to the west. Chop a passage. Traces of volcanic action. Highly magnetic hills. The Leipoa ocellata. Tapping pits. Glen Osborne. Cotton-bush flats. Frowning bastion walls. Fort Mueller. A strong running stream. Natives' smokes. Gosse returning. Limestone formation. Native pheasants' nests. Egg-carrying. Mount Squires. The Mus conditor's nest. Difficulty with the horses. A small creek and native well. Steer for the west. Night work. Very desolate places. A circular storm. The Shoeing Camp. A bare hill. The Cups. Fresh looking creek. Brine and bitter water. The desert pea. Jimmy and the natives. Natives prowling at night. Searching for water. Horses suffering from thirst. Horseflesh. The Cob. The camp on fire. Men and horses choking for water. Abandon the place. Displeasing view. Native signs. Another cup. Thermometer 106 degrees. Return to the Cob. Old dry well. A junction from the east. Green rushes. Another waterless camp. Return to the Shoeing Camp. Intense cold. Biting dogs' noses. A nasal organ. Boiling an egg. Tietkens and Gibson return unsuccessful. Another attempt west. Country burnt by natives.

We had now been travelling along the northern foot of the more southerly of the two lines of hills which separated, at the west end of the Champ de Mars; and on reaching the Bell Rock, this southern line ceased, while the northern one still ran on, though at diminished elevation, and we now travelled towards two hills standing together about west-north-west. On reaching them, in thirteen miles, I found a native encampment; there were several old and new bough gunyahs, and the fires were alight at the doors? of many of them. We could not see the people because they hid themselves, but I knew quite well they were watching us close by. There was a large bare slab of rock, in which existed two fine cisterns several feet in depth, one much longer than the other, the small one containing quite a sufficient supply for all my horses. I called these Hogarth's Wells, and the two hills Mount Marie and Mount Jeanie. I was compelled to leave one of these receptacles empty, which for ages the simple inhabitants of these regions had probably never seen dry before. Some hills lay south-westerly, and we reached them in nine miles; they were waterless. Southward the country appeared all scrub. The western horizon was broken by ranges with some high points amongst them; they were a long way off. To the west-north-west some bald ranges also ran on. I made across to them, steering for a fall or broken gap to the north-north-west. This was a kind of glen, and I found a watercourse in it, with a great quantity of tea-tree, which completely choked up the passage with good-sized trees, whose limbs and branches were so interwoven that they prevented any animal larger than a man from approaching the water, bubbling along at their feet. We had to chop a passage to it for our horses. The hills were quite destitute of timber, and were composed of huge masses of rifted granite, which could only have been so riven by seismatic action, which at one time must have been exceedingly frequent in this region.

I may mention that, from the western half of the Musgrave Range, all the Mann, the Tomkinson, and other ranges westward have been shivered into fragments by volcanic force. Most of the higher points of all the former and latter consist of frowning masses of black-looking or intensely red ironstone, or granite thickly coated with iron. Triodia grows as far up the sides of the hills as it is possible to obtain any soil; but even this infernal grass cannot exist on solid rock; therefore all the summits of these hills are bare. These shivered masses of stone have large interstices amongst them, which are the homes, dens, or resorts of swarms of a peculiar marsupial known as the rock wallaby, which come down on to the lower grounds at night to feed. If they expose themselves in the day, they are the prey of aborigines and eagles, if at night, they fall victims to wild dogs or dingoes. The rocks frequently change their contours from earthquake shocks, and great numbers of these creatures are crushed and smashed by the trembling rocks, so that these unfortunate creatures, beset by so many dangers, exist always in a chronic state of fear and anxiety, and almost perpetual motion.

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