“Our fount disappearing,
    From the rain-drop did borrow,
    To me comes great cheering,
    I leave it to-morrow.”

There were a number of opossums here which often damaged the garden produce in the night.  There were various dull-plumaged small birds, with hawks, crows, and occasionally ducks, and one abominable croaking creature at night used to annoy me exceedingly, and though I often walked up the glen I could never discover what sort of bird it was.  It might have been a raven; yes, a raven never flitting may be sitting, may be sitting, on those shattered rocks of wretchedness—­on that Troglodytes’ shore, where in spirit I may wander, o’er those arid regions yonder; but where I wish to squander, time and energies no more.  Though a most romantic region, its toils and dangers legion, my memory oft besieging, what time cannot restore; again I hear the shocks of the shattering of the rocks, see the wallabies in flocks, all trembling at the roar, of the volcanic reverberations, or seismatic detonations, which peculiar sensations I wish to know no more.  The horses were mustered at last, and at length we were about to depart, not certainly in the direction I should have wished to go, but still to something new.

Fort Mueller, of course, was named after my kind friend the Baron*, who was a personal contributor to the fund for this expedition.  It was really the most astonishing place it has ever been my fortune to visit.  Occasionally one would hear the metallic sounding clang, of some falling rock, smashing into the glen below, toppled from its eminence by some subterranean tremour or earthquake shock, and the vibrations of the seismatic waves would precipitate the rocks into different groups and shapes than they formerly possessed.  I had many strange, almost superstitious feelings with regard to this singular spot, for there was always a strange depression upon my spirits whilst here, arising partly perhaps from the constant dread of attacks from the hostile natives, and partly from the physical peculiarities of the region itself.

   “On all there hung a shadow and a fear,
    A sense of mystery, the spirit daunted,
    And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
    This region’s haunted.”

On the 16th we departed, leaving to the native owners of the soil, this singular glen, where the water flowed only in the night, where the earthquake and the dry thunderstorm occurred every day, and turned our backs for the last time upon

   “Their home by horror haunted,
    Their desert land enchanted,”

and plunged again into the northern wilderness.

CHAPTER 2.7.  FROM 16TH JANUARY TO 19TH FEBRUARY, 1874.

The Kangaroo Tanks. 
Horses stampede. 
Water by digging. 
Staggering horses. 
Deep rock-reservoir. 
Glen Cumming. 
Mount Russell. 
Glen Gerald. 
Glen Fielder.