could not have expected to find in works carried on in the bush, and under such varied circumstances of distraction and anxiety as had followed Lieutenant Grey’s footsteps:  though terribly worn and ill, our opportune arrival, and the feeling that he was among those who could appreciate his exertions, seemed already to operate in his recovery.  Upon an old and tattered chart, that had indeed done the state some service, we attempted to settle the probable course of the Glenelg, the knotty question held us for some hours in hot debate; but as in a previous paragraph, I have rendered my more deliberate opinions, I need not here recount the varied topics discussed during that memorable evening:  but it may be readily imagined with how swift a flight one hour followed another, while I listened with eager impatience to Lieutenant Grey’s account of a country and people till now unknown even to English enterprise.  He appears to have seen the same kind of grape-like fruit* that we observed in King’s Sound.

(Footnote.  Grey’s Australia Volume 1 page 211.)

THE ENCAMPMENT.

I took the boat in the afternoon at high-water to proceed to the encampment, which we were then able to approach within a quarter of a mile.  It was situated in the depth of a creek, into which a clear and sparkling stream of fresh water poured its abundance:  the shore was formed of enormous granite boulders, which rendered it hardly accessible except at high-water; and the red sandstone platform which is here the nature of the coast, was abruptly intersected by one of those singular valleys which give so marked and so distinctive a characteristic to Australian geology.  The separated cliffs approach to within about a quarter of a mile of each other, and then—­still preserving their precipitous form—­recede some three miles inland, in a southerly direction, and there rejoining, make any passage from Walker’s Valley* to the interior a barely practicable feat.

(Footnote.  So named by Lieutenant Grey to commemorate the services rendered by the surgeon of his party in finding a road from it to the interjacent country.)

TIMOR PONIES.

The encampment consisted of a few roofless huts, placed irregularly upon a carpet of rich grass, whereon six Timor ponies were recruiting after the fatigues of a journey in which they appeared to have borne their full share of privation and danger.  Their marketable value was indeed but small, and Lieutenant Grey had, therefore, determined to leave them behind in the unrestrained enjoyment of their natural freedom.

My visit was made after the encampment had been finally abandoned, and the thought that a little spot once tenanted by civilized man was about to be yielded to that dreary solitude from which for a while he had rescued it, made the pilgrimage a melancholy one.  The scene itself was in strict keeping with such thoughts—­the rugged and lofty cliffs which frown down upon the valley—­the flitting shadows of the watchful eagles soaring far over my head—­and the hoarse murmurs of the tide among the rocky masses on the beach—­ail heightened the effects of a picture engraven on my memory too deeply for time itself to efface.