It Was Happiness To Lie At Ease Upon Such A Carpet And Gaze Upon Such A Scene, And It Was Happiness The More Ecstatic To Know That I Was The First Of A Civilised Race Of Men Who Had Ever Beheld It.

My visions of a former night really seemed to be prophetic.

The trend of the creek, and the valley down which it came, was about 25 degrees south of west. We soon found it became contracted by impinging hills. At ten miles from camp we found a pool of water in the bed. In about a couple of miles farther, to my surprise I found we had reached its head and its source, which was the drainage of a big hill. There was no more water and no rock-holes, neither was there any gorge. Some triodia grew on the hills, but none on the lower ground. The valley now changed into a charming amphitheatre. We had thus traced our Birthday Creek, to its own birthplace. It has a short course, but a merry one, and had ended for us at its proper beginning. As there appeared to be no water in the amphitheatre, we returned to the pool we had seen in the creek. Several small branch creeks running through pretty little valleys joined our creek to-day. We were now near some of the higher cones of the main chain, and could see that they were all entirely timberless, and that triodia grew upon their sides.

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