This morning directly after breakfast I read prayers to the men, and then commenced my preparations for the excursion on which I intended to start in the evening. Whilst I was occupied in arranging my papers Mr. Lushington observed two natives sitting on the rocks on the top of the cliffs which overlooked the valley, and gazing down intently on us. The instant that he made friendly signs to them they rose from their seats and began to retreat. Some of the party then called to them and one of the natives answered; but they still moved rapidly away. I would not allow them to be followed for fear of increasing their alarm, and in the hope that they would return, but was disappointed. It must have awakened strange feelings in the breast of these two savages, who could never before have seen civilized man, thus to have sat spectators and overlookers of the every action of such incomprehensible beings as we must have appeared; and the relation to their comrades of the wonders they had witnessed could not have been to them a whit less marvellous than the tales of the grey-headed Irish peasant, when he recounts the freaks of the fairies, "whose midnight revels by the forest side or fountain" he has watched intently from some shrub-clad hill. COMMENCEMENT OF FIRST EXCURSION. I started in the evening, accompanied by Corporal John Coles and Private R. Mustard, both of the corps of Royal Sappers and Miners, and for a short distance by two or three others of the party from the camp. We moved up the ravine in which we were encamped in a nearly due south direction, and after following this course about a mile turned up a branch ravine to the left, bearing 87 degrees from the north. CHARACTER OF THE SCENERY. GEOLOGICAL PHENOMENA. The romantic scenery of this narrow glen could not be surpassed. Its width at bottom was not more than forty or fifty feet, on each side rose cliffs of sandstone between three and four hundred feet high and nearly perpendicular; lofty paper-bark trees grew here and there, and down the middle ran a beautiful stream of clear, cool water, which now gushed along, a murmuring mountain torrent, and anon formed a series of small cascades. As we ascended higher the width contracted; the paper-bark trees disappeared; and the bottom of the valley became thickly wooded with wild nutmeg and other fragrant trees. Cockatoos soared, with hoarse screams, above us, many-coloured parakeets darted away, filling the woods with their playful cries, and the large white pigeons which feed on the wild nutmegs cooed loudly to their mates, and battered the boughs with their wings as they flew away.