Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration, Being a Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions into and Through Central South Australia and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876Giles, Ernest
History
Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration, Being a Narrative Compiled from the Journals of Five Exploring Expeditions into and Through Central South Australia and Western Australia, from 1872 to 1876
Giles, Ernest
Australia -- Discovery and exploration
of this wonderful feature; its extraordinary appearance will never be
out of my remembrance. It is no doubt of volcanic origin, belched out
of the bowels, and on to the surface, of the earth, by the sulphurous
upheavings of subterraneous and subaqueous fires, and cooled and
solidified into monstrous masses by the gelid currents of the deepmost
waves of the most ancient of former oceans. As I before remarked, it
is composed of mixed and rounded stones, formed into rounded shapes,
but some upon the eastern side are turreted, and some almost pillars,
except that their thickness is rather out of proportion to their
height. The highest point of the whole, as given before, is 1500 feet
above the ground, while it is 2800 feet above the sea-level. Could I
be buried at Mount Olga, I should certainly borrow Sir Christopher
Wren's epitaph, Circumspice si monumentum requiris. To the eastward
from here, as mentioned in my first expedition, and not very far off,
lay another strange and singular-looking mound, similar perhaps to
this. Beyond that, and still further to the east, and a very long way
off, was another mount or hill or range, but very indistinct from
distance.
On the 9th we went away to the near bare-looking mountain to the east;
it was twenty miles. We found a very fine deep pool of water lying in
sand under the abrupt and rocky face of the mount upon its southern
side. There was also a fine, deep, shady, and roomy cave here,
ornamented in the usual aboriginal fashion. There were two marks upon
the walls, three or four feet long, in parallel lines with spots
between them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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