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.

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