We Planted The Seeds Of A Lot Of Vegetables And Trees Here, Such As Tasmanian Blue Gum, Wattle, Melons, Pumpkins, Cucumbers, Maize, Etc.; And Then Mr. Tietkens And I Got Our Horses And Rode To The Main Hills To The West, In Hopes Of Discovering More Water.

We started late, and it was dark when we reached the range.

The country passed over between it and our encampment, was exceedingly beautiful; hills being thrown up in red ridges of bare rock, with the native fig-tree growing among the rocks, festooning them into infinite groups of beauty, while the ground upon which we rode was a perfect carpet of verdure. We were therefore in high anticipation of finding some waters equivalent to the scene; but as night was advancing, our search had to be delayed until the morrow. The dew was falling fast, the night air was cool, and deliciously laden with the scented exhalations from trees and shrubs and flowers. The odour of almonds was intense, reminding me of the perfumes of the wattle blooms of the southern, eastern, and more fertile portions of this continent. So exquisite was the aroma, that I recalled to my mind Gordon's beautiful lines: -

"In the spring when the wattle gold trembles, Twixt shadow and shine, When each dew-laden air draught resembles; A long draught of wine."

So delightful indeed was the evening that it was late when we gave ourselves up to the oblivion of slumber, beneath the cool and starry sky. We made a fire against a log about eighteen inches thick; this was a limb from an adjacent blood-wood or red gum-tree, and this morning we discovered that it had been chopped off its parent stem either with an axe or tomahawk, and carried some forty or fifty yards from where it had originally fallen. This seemed very strange; in the first place for natives, so far out from civilisation as this, to have axes or tomahawks; and in the second place, to chop logs or boughs off a tree was totally against their practice. By sunrise we were upon the summit of the mountain; it consisted of enormous blocks and boulders of red granite, so riven and fissured that no water could possibly lodge upon it for an instant. I found it also to be highly magnetic, there being a great deal of ironstone about the rocks. It turned the compass needle from its true north point to 10 degrees south of west, but the attraction ceased when the compass was removed four feet from contact with the rocks. The view from this mount was of singular and almost awful beauty. The mount, and all the others connected with it, rose simply like islands out of a vast ocean of scrub. The beauty of the locality lay entirely within itself. Innumerable red ridges ornamented with fig-trees, rising out of green and grassy slopes, met the eye everywhere to the east, north, and northeast, and the country between each was just sufficiently timbered to add a charm to the view.

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