As my reader is aware, I left the Finke issuing through an impracticable gorge in these same ranges, now some seventy-five miles behind us, and in that distance not a break had occurred in the line whereby I could either get over or through it, to meet the Finke again; indeed, at this distance it was doubtful whether it were worth while to endeavour to do so, as one can never tell what change may take place, in even the largest of Australian streams, in such a distance.  When last seen, it was trending along a valley under the foot of the highest of three tiers of hills, and coming from the west; but whether its sources are in those hills, or that it still runs on somewhere to the north of us, is the question which I now hope to solve.  I am the more anxious to rediscover the Finke, if it still exists, because water has been by no means plentiful on the route along which I have lately been travelling; and I believe a better country exists upon the other side of the mountains.

At starting, Carmichael and I at first walked across the plain, we being encamped upon its southern end.  It was beautifully grassed, and had good soil, and it would make an excellent racecourse, or ground for a kangaroo hunt.  We saw numbers of kangaroos, and emus too, but could get no shots at them.  In three miles the plain ended in thick, indeed very dense, scrub, which continued to the foot of the hills; in it the grass was long, dry, and tangled with dead and dry burnt sticks and timber, making it exceedingly difficult to walk through.  Reaching the foot of the hills, I found the natives had recently burnt all the vegetation from their sides, leaving the stones, of which it was composed, perfectly bare.  It was a long distance to the top of the first ridge, but the incline was easy, and I was in great hopes, if it continued so, to be able to get the horses over the mountains at this spot.  Upon arriving at the top of the slope, I was, however, undeceived upon that score, for we found the high mount, for which we were steering, completely separated from us by a yawning chasm, which lay, under an almost sheer precipice, at our feet.  The high mountain beyond, near the crown, was girt around by a solid wall of rock, fifty or sixty feet in height, from the edge of which the summit rose.  It was quite unapproachable, except, perhaps, in one place, round to the northward.

The solid rock of which it had formerly been composed had, by some mighty force of nature, been split into innumerable fissures and fragments, both perpendicularly and horizontally, and was almost mathematically divided into pieces or squares, or unequal cubes, simply placed upon one another, like masons’ work without mortar.  The lower strata of these divisions were large, the upper tapered to pieces not much larger than a brick, at least they seemed so from a distance.  The whole appearance of this singular mount was grand and awful, and I could not but reflect upon the time when