Opposite to where I struck it stood an extraordinary hill or ridge, consisting of a huge red turtle back having a number of enormous red stones almost egg-shaped, traversing, or rather standing in a row upon, its whole length like a line of elliptical Tors. I could compare it to nothing else than an enormous oolitic monster of the turtle kind carrying its eggs upon its back. A few cypress pine-trees grew in the interstices of the rocks, giving it a most elegant appearance. Hoping to find some rock or other reservoir of water, I rode over to this creature, or feature. Before reaching its foot, I came upon a small piece of open, firm, grassy ground, most beautifully variegated with many-coloured vegetation, with a small bare piece of ground in the centre, with rain water lying on it. The place was so exquisitely lovely it seemed as if only rustic garden seats were wanting, to prove that it had been laid out by the hand of man. But it was only an instance of one of Nature's freaks, in which she had so successfully imitated her imitator, Art. I watered my horse and left him to graze on this delectable spot, while I climbed the oolitic's back. There was not sufficient water in the garden for all my horses, and it was actually necessary for me to find more, or else the region would be untenable.
The view from this hill was wild and strange; the high, bald forehead of the mountain was still four or five miles away, the country between being all scrub. The creek came from the south-westward, and was lost in the scrubs to the east of north. A thick and vigorous clump of eucalypts down the creek induced me first to visit them, but the channel was hopelessly dry. Returning, I next went up the creek, and came to a place where great boulders of stone crossed the bed, and where several large-sized holes existed, but were now dry. Hard by, however, I found a damp spot, and near it in the sand a native well, not more than two feet deep, and having water in it. Still farther up I found an overhanging rock, with a good pool of water at its foot, and I was now satisfied with my day's work. Here I camped. I made a fire at a large log lying in the creek bed; my horse was up to his eyes in most magnificent herbage, and I could not help envying him as I watched him devouring his food. I felt somewhat lonely, and cogitated that what has been written or said by cynics, solitaries, or Byrons, of the delights of loneliness, has no real home in the human heart. Nothing could appal the mind so much as the contemplation of eternal solitude. Well may another kind of poet exclaim, Oh, solitude! where are the charms that sages have seen in thy face? for human sympathy is one of the passions of human nature. Natives had been here very recently, and the scrubs were burning, not far off to the northwards, in the neighbourhood of the creek channel. As night descended, I lay me down by my bright camp fire in peace to sleep, though doubtless there are very many of my readers who would scarcely like to do the same. Such a situation might naturally lead one to consider how many people have lain similarly down at night, in fancied security, to be awakened only by the enemies' tomahawk crashing through their skulls. Such thoughts, if they intruded themselves upon my mind, were expelled by others that wandered away to different scenes and distant friends, for this Childe Harold also had a mother not forgot, and sisters whom he loved, but saw them not, ere yet his weary pilgrimage begun.
Dreams also, between sleeping and waking, passed swiftly through my brain, and in my lonely sleep I had real dreams, sweet, fanciful, and bright, mostly connected with the enterprise upon which I had embarked—dreams that I had wandered into, and was passing through, tracts of fabulously lovely glades, with groves and grottos green, watered by never-failing streams of crystal, dotted with clusters of magnificent palm-trees, and having groves, charming groves, of the fairest of pines, of groves “whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm.”
“And all throughout the night there reigned the sense
Of waking dream, with luscious thoughts o'erladen;
Of joy too conscious made, and too intense,
By the swift advent of this longed-for aidenn.”
On awaking, however, I was forced to reflect, how “mysterious are these laws! The vision's finer than the view: her landscape Nature never draws so fair as fancy drew.” The morning was cold, the thermometer stood at 28°, and now—
“The morn was up again, the dewy morn;
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And smiling, as if earth contained no tomb:
And glowing into day.”
With this charming extract from Byron for breakfast I saddled my horse, having nothing more to detain me here, intending to bring up the whole party as soon as possible.
[ILLUSTRATION 13]
