CHAPTER 2.3. FROM 10TH SEPTEMBER TO 30TH SEPTEMBER, 1873.
Leave for Mount Olga.
Change of scene.
Desert oak-trees.
The Mann range.
Fraser’s Wells.
Mount Olga’s foot.
Gosse’s expedition.
Marvellous mountain.
Running water.
Black and gold butterflies.
Rocky bath.
Ayers’ Rock.
Appearance of Mount Olga.
Irritans camp.
Sugar-loaf Hill.
Collect plants.
Peaches.
A patch of better country.
A new creek and glen.
Heat and cold.
A pellucid pond.
Zoe’s Glen.
Christy Bagot’s Creek.
Stewed ducks.
A lake.
Hector’s Springs and Pass.
Lake Wilson.
Stevenson’s Creek.
Milk thistles.
Beautiful amphitheatre.
A carpet of verdure.
Green swamp.
Smell of camels.
How I found Livingstone.
Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit.
Cotton and salt bush flats.
The Champ de Mars.
Sheets of water.
Peculiar tree.
Pleasing scene.
Harriet’s Springs.
Water in grass.
Ants and burrs.
Mount Aloysius.
Across the border.
The Bell Rock.
We left this pretty glen with its purling stream and reedy bed, and entered very shortly upon an entirely different country, covered with porcupine grass. We went north-west to some ridges at seventeen miles, where there was excellent vegetation, but no water. I noticed to-day for the first time upon this expedition some of the desert oak trees (Casuarina Decaisneana). Nine miles farther we reached a round hill, from which Mount Olga bore north. We were still a considerable distance away, and as I did not know of any water existing at Mount Olga, I was anxious to find some, for the horses had none where we encamped last night.