Nearer To Us, North-Westerly, And Stretching Nearly To West, Lay The Dry, Irregular, And Broken Expanse Of An Ancient Lake Bed.

On riding over to it we found it very undefined, as patches of sandhills occurred amongst low ridges of limestone, with bushes and a few low trees all over the expanse.

There were patches of dry, soda-like particles, and the soil generally was a loose dust coloured earth. Samphire bushes also grew in patches upon it, and some patches of our arch-enemy, triodia. Great numbers of wallaby, a different kind from the rock, were seen amongst the limestone rises; they had completely honeycombed all we inspected. Water there was none, and if Noah's deluge visited this place it could be conveniently stowed away, and put out of sight in a quarter of an hour.

Returning to the horses, we turned southerly to the most westerly creek that issues from the range. I found some water up at the head of it in rock-holes; but it was so far up easterly, that we could not have been more than five or six miles across the hills from our last night's encampment at the Circus. There was only a poor supply of water in two small holes, which could not last longer than three days at the most. The thermometer ranged up to 104 degrees to-day. Some of the horses are now terribly footsore. I would shoe them, only that we are likely to be in the sandhills again immediately. I did not exactly know which way to go. Mr. Tietkens and I ascended the highest hill in this part of the range. I had yesterday seen something like the top of a ridge south-westerly; I now found it was part of a low distant range, and not of a very promising nature. There was a conspicuous mountain, which now bore north-east about fifty miles away, and I fancied I saw the refracted tops of other ranges floating in the mirage. I thought, from the mountain just mentioned, I might discover others, which might lead me away to the west. Up to the present time we had always called this, in consequence of its bearing when first seen, the North-west Mountain. I thought a change of country might be met with sooner in a north or north-westerly direction than in a west or south-westerly one, as the sources of the Murchison River must be met somewhere in the former direction. I tried the boiling-point of water here, and found that the ebullition occurred at two degrees higher than at the Alice Falls, which indicated a fall of nearly 1000 feet, the western end of the range being much lower than the middle or eastern. We had still a couple of bottles of spirit left in the medical department, and as nobody seemed inclined to get ill, we opened one here. Jimmy Andrews having been a sailor boy, I am afraid had learnt bad habits, as he was very fond of grog. When we opened the last bottle at Christmas, and Jimmy had had a taste, he said, "What's the use of only a nobbler or two? I wouldn't give a d - ," dump, I suppose he meant, "for grog unless I could get drunk." I said, "Well, now, my impression is that it would require very little grog to do that." He said, "Why, I'd drink six bottles off and never know it." I said, "Well, the next bottle we open you shall have as much out of it as you can take in one drink, even if you drink the whole bottle." He replied, "Oh, all right, I'll leave a nobbler for you, you know, Mr. Giles; and I'd like to give Tietkens a taste; but that [adjective] Gibson, I'll swear he won't git none." So we opened the bottle, and I said, "Now then, Jimmy, here's your grog, let's see how much you can drink." "Oh!" said he," I ain't going to drink it all at once." "All right," I said, "if you don't, we shall - so now is your chance." Jimmy poured out a good stiff glass and persisted in swallowing it raw. In five minutes he was fast asleep, and that was all he got out of the bottle; he never woke till morning, and then - well, the bottle was empty then.

My readers will form a better idea of this peculiar and distant mountain range when I tell them that it is more than sixty miles long, averaging five or six miles through. It is of a bold and rounded form; there is nothing pointed or jagged in its appearance anywhere, except where the eagle sat upon the rock at the Circus; its formation is mostly a white conglomerate, something between granite, marble, and quartz, though some portions are red. It is surrounded, except to the east, by deserts, and may be called the monarch of those regions where the unvisited mountains stand. It possesses countless rocky glens and gorges, creeks and valleys, nearly all containing reservoirs of the purest water. When the Australian summer sunset smooths the roughness of the corrugated range, like a vast and crumpled garment, spread by the great Creator's hand, east and west before me stretching, these eternal mountains stand. It is a singular feature in a strange land, and God knows by what beady drops of toilsome sweat Tietkens and I rescued it from its former and ancient oblivion. Its position in latitude is between the 24th and 25th parallels, and its longitude between 127 degrees 30' and 128 degrees 30'. I named it the Rawlinson Range, after Sir Henry Rawlinson, President of the Royal Geographical Society of London. I found a singular moth- and fly-catching, plant in this range; it exudes a gummy substance, by which insects become attached to the leaves. The appearance of this range from a distance is white, flat, corrugated, rounded, and treeless. It rises between 1100 and 1200 feet in its highest portions, about the centre, in the neighbourhood of Fort McKellar, above the surrounding country, though its greatest elevation above the sea is over 3000 feet.

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