Mueller cannot be said to be a pretty spot, for it is so confined by
the frowning, battlemented, fortress-like walls of black and broken
hills, that there is scarcely room to turn round in it, and attacks by
the natives are much to be dreaded here.

We have had to clear the ground round our fort of the stones and huge
bunches of triodia which we found there. The slopes of the hills are
also thickly clothed with this dreadful grass. The horses feed some
three or four miles away on the fine open grassy country which, as I
mentioned before, surrounds this range. The herbage being so excellent
here, the horses got so fresh, we had to build a yard with the
tea-tree timber to run them in when we wanted to catch any. I still
hope rain will fall, and lodge at Elder's Creek, a hundred miles to
the west, so as to enable me to push out westward again. Nearly every
day the sky is overcast, and rain threatens to fall, especially
towards the north, where a number of unconnected ridges or low ranges
lie. Mr. Tietkens and I prepared to start northerly to-morrow, the
20th, to inspect them.

We got out in that direction about twenty miles, passed near a hill I
named Mount Scott*, and found a small creek, but no water. The country
appeared to have been totally unvisited by rains.

We carried some water in a keg for ourselves, but the horses got none.
The country passed over to-day was mostly red sandhills, recently
burnt, and on that account free from spinifex. We travelled about
north, 40 degrees east. We next steered away for a dark-looking,
bluff-ending hill, nearly north-north-east. Before arriving at it we
searched among a lot of pine-clad hills for water without effect,
reaching the hill in twenty-two miles. Resting our horses, we ascended