I struck a little southern tributary of that pretty grass-banked river, and saw a noteworthy as well as a quite Australian sight.  Some recent slight rains had just set the tiny creek in motion, and it was now in the act of filling up a previously quite dry waterhole.  I watched the tiny stream till it filled up this hole, and then saw it duly into the next, only a couple of hundred yards off.  There was a long succession of these holes before it, generally so precisely rounded and scooped out as to give the idea of human intervention, only that the human beings were nowhere visible there as yet.  Then I came down upon the Wannon, in continuous admiration of the rolling hills on either side, grass-covered to the very tops.  One part of the Wannon vale here is remarkable for the deep, almost blood-redness of its rich soil, a hue which seemed to come from the similarly coloured stone and rock all about.  Here I suddenly came upon a grand spectacle—­the falls of the Wannon, which Chevalier’s highly artistic brush has immortalized, along with almost countless other Australian beauty.  The river plunges over a far-projecting floor direct into a volcanic crater, which, although very much less in its dimensions, was as unmistakable in its character as that of Mount Eeles.  The only thing I had to regret as absent from the scene, but a most important factor, was water, for, as far as I recollect, not one drop was visible over the edge.  At flood seasons the spectacle must be grand indeed.

As evening drew on, causing me to be on the alert for quarters, I espied a rather pretentious homestead, cosily placed in a natural shelter half-way up the hillside.  This proved to be Mr. Edward Henty’s.  He was not at home, but Mrs. Henty happily was.  Young, ladylike, beautiful, she received me with that high courtesy which sets one at once at ease by the flattering impression that in these squatting solitudes it is rather the visited than the visitors who are the obliged parties.  Ten years later I, with my wife, called upon her in Melbourne to renew this early acquaintance.  She was then, of course, ten years older, but hardly less charming.  Thirty-four more years have since elapsed, and yet I must still hope to meet her once more in that country which has become so great, and which is, in so special a sense, her own.

I reached the Glenelg, which, however, I found to be, at or near the Wannon junction, hardly better than a big, irregular, ugly ditch.  How curious!—­for not far off, above or below, I might have found great deep waterholes and picturesque water stretches as sketched by Mitchell.  I took all for granted, and turned back homewards.