23rd January.
Leaving the camp in charge of Dr. Mueller, at 6.30 a.m. started in a
southerly direction, accompanied by Messrs. H. Gregory and Baines, taking
with us four horses and six days' rations, etc.; after clearing the deep
rocky gullies near the river, we passed over a more level country with
some fine open plains covered with fine grass, but the intervening ridges
were very stony; at 9.45 a.m. reached the highest part of the range, and
the country declined to the south-east, and intersected by deep rocky
ravines trending towards a large valley, which is probably drained by the
southern branch of the Victoria; the course was now south-east,
descending to the valley of a creek, through a very barren and rugged
sandstone country, producing little besides stunted eucalypti, acacia,
and triodia. At 11.15 a.m. halted at the creek, and resumed our route at
3.0 p.m., and followed the valley to the south-east till 4.40 p.m., when
it turned east through a rocky gorge between cliffs 150 feet high; but
notwithstanding the dense bush of pandanus, fallen rocks and deep muddy
channel of the creek, we succeeded in forcing our way through the gorge
of the creek, and bivouacked in the open valley below at 5.30 p.m., there
being a fine patch of grass in the flat, though the surrounding country
is rocky and barren. The sandstone rocks show a great disturbance and dip
at all angles and directions, so that no general angle or strike could be
determined; the upper rocks, however, show a new feature in a coarse
conglomerate of fragments of the lower sandstones and a few fragments of
basalt; some of the enclosed pieces of rock are nearly a foot in
diameter, and are mostly angular, though occasionally round; this rock
forms a horizontal bed of 100 feet in thickness. Towards evening the sky
was clouded, with lightning to the east, but no rain.