At this water-hole, "Parnari," we surprised three natives who were strangers. They did not betray any fear, but slept at the tents and left us the following day, as they said to bring more natives to visit us, but we never saw anything more of them. They were hill natives, and shorter in stature than the river tribes.
Parnari
The day succeeding that of our arrival at Parnari was very peculiar, the thermometer did not rise higher than 81 degrees, but the barometer fell to 28.730 degrees, and the atmosphere was so light that we could hardly breathe. I had hoped that this would have been a prelude to rain, but it came not.
The period from the 1st to the 5th of November was employed in taking bearings from the loftiest points of the range, both to the northward and southward of us; in examining the creek to the south-west, and preparing for a second excursion from the camp.
The rock formation of Curnapaga was of three different kinds. A mixture of lime and clay, a tufaceous deposit, and an apparently recent deposit of soapstone, containing a variety of substances, as alumina, silica, lime, soda, magnesia, and iron. The ranges on either side of the glen were generally varieties of gneiss and granite, in many of which feldspar predominated, coarse ferruginous sandstone, and a siliceous rock with mammillary hematite and hornblende. These, and a great mixture of iron ores, composed the first or eastern line of Stanley's Barrier Range.
View from Stanley's Range