After having discovered this cave I returned to the party and, directing them to prepare for moving on, I ordered that as soon as all was ready they should proceed past the cave, so that all would have an opportunity of examining it, and in the meantime I returned in order to make sketches of the principal paintings. The party soon arrived and, when my sketches and notes were completed, we retraced a portion of our route of this morning, moving round the sandstone ridge through one portion of which I saw a sort of pass which I thought might perhaps afford us a means of egress. I therefore halted the party and moved up with Corporal Auger to examine it. After proceeding some distance we found a cave larger than the one seen this morning; of its actual size however I have no idea, for being pressed for time I did not attempt to explore it, having merely ascertained that it contained no paintings.
INTAGLIO CUT IN A ROCK.
I was moving on when we observed the profile of a human face and head cut out in a sandstone rock which fronted the cave; this rock was so hard that to have removed such a large portion of it with no better tool than a knife and hatchet made of stone, such as the Australian natives generally possess, would have been a work of very great labour. The head was two feet in length, and sixteen inches in breadth in the broadest part; the depth of the profile increased gradually from the edges where it was nothing, to the centre where it was an inch and a half; the ear was rather badly placed, but otherwise the whole of the work was good, and far superior to what a savage race could be supposed capable of executing. The only proof of antiquity that it bore about it was that all the edges of the cutting were rounded and perfectly smooth, much more so than they could have been from any other cause than long exposure to atmospheric influences.
ROUTE CONTINUED. HIGH GRASS.
16. Head cut in Sandstone Rock. Captain Grey, delt. G. Foggo, Lithographer. M. and N. Hanhart, Lithographic Printers.
After having made a sketch of this head (see the accompanying plate) I returned to the party and, as I had not been able to find a path which would lead us across the sandstone ridge, we continued our course round it, retracing our steps until we reached the stream which had been crossed this morning, and then moved westward, keeping along its southern bank until we had turned the sandstone range and reached another stream running from the south, which we traced up in the direction of its source, travelling through a series of basaltic valleys of so luxuriant a character that those of the party who were not very tall travelled, as they themselves expressed it, between two high green walls, over which they could not see; and these green walls were composed of rich grass which the ponies ate with avidity. On a subsequent occasion when we visited this valley we had to call to one another in order to ascertain our relative positions when only a few yards apart; and yet the vegetation was neither rank nor coarse, but as fine a grass as I have ever seen.
REFLECTIONS.
We halted for the night in one of these lovely valleys; a clear stream bubbled along within about fifty yards of us and, about a mile beyond, two darkly-wooded basaltic hills raised their heads, and between these and the stream our ponies were feeding in grass higher than themselves. I sat in the fading light, looking at the beautiful scenery around me, which now for the first time gladdened the eyes of Europeans; and I wondered that so fair a land should only be the abode of savage men; and then I thought of the curious paintings we had this day seen, of the timid character of the natives, of their anomalous position in so fertile a country, and wondered how long these things were to be. With so wide a field of conjecture before me, thought naturally thronged on thought, and the night was far advanced ere I laid down to seek repose from the fatigues of the day.