In the morning I decided to send Mr. Tietkens back to the camp to bring the party here, while I went to the mountain to search for water.  We now discovered we had brought but a poor supply of food, and that a hearty supper would demolish the lot, so we had to be sadly economical.  When we got our horses the next morning we departed, each on his separate errand—­Mr. Tietkens for the camp, I for the mountain.  I made a straight course for it, and in three or four miles found the country exceedingly scrubby.  At ten miles I came upon a number of native huts, which were of large dimensions and two-storied; by this I mean they had an upper attic, or cupboard recess.  When the natives return to these, I suppose they know of some water, or else get it out of the roots of trees.  The scrubs became thicker and thicker, and only at intervals could the mountain be seen.  At a spot where the natives had burnt the old grass, and where some new rich vegetation grew, I gave my horse the benefit of an hour’s rest, for he had come twenty-two miles.  The day was delightful; the thermometer registered only 76 degrees in the shade.  I had had a very poor breakfast, and now had an excellent appetite for all the dinner I could command, and I could not help thinking that there is a great deal of sound philosophy in the Chinese doctrine, That the seat of the mind and the intellect is situate in the stomach.

Starting again and gaining a rise in the dense ocean of scrub, I got a sight of the mountain, whose appearance was most wonderful; it seemed so rifted and riven, and had acres of bare red rock without a shrub or tree upon it.  I next found myself under the shadow of a huge rock towering above me amidst the scrubs, but too hidden to perceive until I reached it.  On ascending it I was much pleased to discover, at a mile and a half off, the gum timber of a creek which meandered through this wilderness.  On gaining its banks I was disappointed to find that its channel was very flat and poorly defined, though the timber upon it was splendid.  Elegant upright creamy stems supported their umbrageous tops, whose roots must surely extend downwards to a moistened soil.  On each bank of the creek was a strip of green and open ground, so richly grassed and so beautifully bedecked with flowers that it seemed like suddenly escaping from purgatory into paradise when emerging from the recesses of the scrubs on to the banks of this beautiful, I wish I might call it, stream.

Opposite to where I struck it stood an extraordinary hill or ridge, consisting of a huge red turtle back having a number of enormous red stones almost egg-shaped, traversing, or rather standing in a row upon, its whole length like a line of elliptical Tors.  I could compare it to nothing else than an enormous oolitic monster of the turtle kind carrying its eggs upon its back.  A few cypress pine-trees grew in the interstices of the rocks, giving it a most elegant appearance.  Hoping to find some rock or other