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. We travelled about north, 40 degrees east. We next steered away for a dark-looking, bluff-ending hill, nearly north-north-east. Before arriving at it we searched among a lot of pine-clad hills for water without effect, reaching the hill in twenty-two miles. Resting our horses, we ascended the hill; from it I discovered, with glasses, that to the north and round easterly and westerly a number of ranges lay at a very considerable distance. The nearest, which lay north, was evidently sixty or seventy miles off. These ranges appeared to be of some length, but were not sufficiently raised above the ocean of scrubs, which occupied the intervening spaces, and rose into high and higher undulations, to allow me to form an opinion with regard to their altitude. Those east of north appeared higher and farther away, and were bolder and more pointed in outline. None of them were seen with the naked eye at first, but, when once seen with the field-glasses, the mind's eye would always represent them to us, floating and faintly waving apparently skywards in their vague and distant mirage. This discovery instantly created a burning desire in both of us to be off and reach them; but there were one or two preliminary determinations to be considered before starting. We are now nearly fifty miles from Fort Mueller, and the horses have been all one day, all one night, and half to-day without water. There might certainly be water at the new ranges, but then again there might not, and although they were at least sixty miles off, our horses might easily reach them. If, however, no water were found, they and perhaps we could never return. My reader must not confound a hundred miles' walk in this region with the same distance in any other. The greatest walker that ever stepped would find more than his match here.

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