We Lost No Time In Descending From The Hills To The Beautiful Flat Below, And Discovered A Fine Long Reach Of Water In The Largest Channel, Where There Were Numbers Of Wild Ducks.

The water was slightly brackish in taste.

It appeared to continue for a considerable distance upon either hand, both east and west. The herbage was exceedingly fine and green, and it was a most excellent place for an encampment. The trees formed the greatest charm of the scene; they were so beautifully white and straight. It could not be said of this place that:

"The gnarled, knotted trunks Eucalyptian, Seemed carved like weird columns Egyptian; With curious device, quaint inscription, And hieroglyph strange."

The high Mount Labouchere bore 8 degrees 20' east of north, the latitude was 25 degrees 3', longitude 117 degrees 59', and the variation 4 degrees 28' west. The wind blew fiercely from the east, and seemed to betoken a change in the weather. From a hill to the north of us we could see that small watercourses descended from low hills to the north and joined the river at various points, one of which, from a north-easterly direction, I shall follow. The country in that direction seemed very rough and stony. We shot a number of ducks and pigeons here. No natives came near us, although Saleh picked up a burning fire-stick close to the camp, dropped by some wandering savage, who had probably taken a very keen scrutiny and mental photograph of us all, so as to enable him to give his fellow-barbarians a full, true, and particular account of the wild and hideous beings who had invaded their territory. The water-hole was nearly three miles long; no other water was to be found in any of the other channels in the neighbourhood. We have seen no other native game here than ducks and pigeons. We noticed large areas of ground on the river flats, which had not only been dug, but re-dug, by the natives, and it seems probable that a great portion of their food consists of roots and vegetables. I remained here two days, and then struck over to the creek before mentioned as coming from the north-east. At eight miles it ran through a rough stony pass between the hills. A few specimens of the native orange-tree, capparis, were seen. We encamped in a very rough glen without water. The country is now a mass of jumbled stones. Still pushing for the peak, we moved slowly over hills, down valleys, and through many rocky passes; generally speaking, the caravan could proceed only along the beds of the trumpery watercourses. By the middle of the 1st of May, the second anniversary of the day I crawled into Fort McKellar, after the loss of Gibson, we crawled up to the foot of Mount Labouchere; it seemed very high, and was evidently very rough and steep. Alec Ross and Saleh ascended the mount in the afternoon, and all the satisfaction they got, was their trouble, for it was so much higher than any of its surroundings that everything beyond it seemed flattened, and nothing in particular could be seen. It is composed of a pink and whitish-coloured granite, with quantities of calcareous stone near its base, and it appears to have been formed by the action of submarine volcanic force. No particular hills and no watercourses could be seen in any northerly direction. The Gascoyne River could be traced by its valley trend for twenty-five or thirty miles eastwards, and it is most probable that it does not exist at all at fifty miles from where we crossed it. The elevation of this mountain was found to be 3400 feet above sea level, and 1800 feet above the surrounding country. The latitude of this feature is 24 degrees 44', and its longitude 118 degrees 2', it lying nearly north of Mount Churchman, and distant 330 miles from it. There were no signs of water anywhere, nor could any places to hold it be seen. It was very difficult to get a camel caravan over such a country. The night we encamped here was the coolest of the season; the thermometer on the morning of the 2nd indicated 48 degrees. On the stony hills we occasionally saw stunted specimens of the scented commercial sandal-wood and native orange-trees. Leaving the foot of this mountain with pleasure, we went away as north-easterly as we could, towards a line of hills with a gap or pass in that direction. We found a small watercourse trending easterly, and in it I discovered a pool of clear rain-water, all among stones. We encamped, although it was a terribly rough place. Arriving at, and departing from, Mount Labouchere has made some of the camels not only very tender-footed, but in consequence of the stony layers lying so up-edged, has cut some of them so badly that the caravan might be tracked by a streak of blood on the stones over which we have passed. This was not so much from the mere stones, but from the camels getting their feet wedged into clefts and dragging them forcibly out. Some were so fortunate as to escape without a scratch. We made very little distance to-day, as our camp is not more than five miles from the summit of the mountain, which bore south 61 degrees west from us. We rested at this little pond for a day, leaving it again upon the 4th.

Following the watercourse we were encamped upon, it took us through a pass, among the rough hills lying north-easterly. So soon as we cleared the pass, the creek turned northerly, and ran away over a fine piece of grassy plain, which was a kind of valley, between two lines of hills running east and west, the valley being of some width. The timber of the creek fell off here, and the watercourse seemed to exhaust itself upon the valley in a westerly direction, but split into two or three channels before ending, if, indeed, it does end here, which I doubt, as I believe this valley and creek, form the head of the Lyons River, as no doubt the channel forms again and continues its course to the west.

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