CH. VI.] ROCKS OF NUNDAWAR. 131 



The sides were grassy and smooth. I named it Mount Mud, 

 in commemoration of the difficulties with which we had 

 contended in its neighbourhood. Welcome Ponds, on which 

 we now encamped, had been converted by the late rain into 

 a running brook. The slopes of the ground on its banks 

 were so anomalous, that but for the actual current of the water 

 to the westward, and the situation of the hills on the east- 

 ward, whence alone it could come, 1 must have remained 

 in doubt as to the direction of the fall of the waters in that 

 channel. The banks of these water-courses on the plains, as 

 I have elsewhere observed, are the highest parts of the ground. 

 This higher ground appeared here to rise towards the west, 

 along the banks of the brook, which, flowing also westward, 

 seemed to run up hill. The soil was mixed with pebbles of 

 vesicular trap, probably amygdaloid with the kernels decom- 

 posed, and containing particles of olivine. There were also 

 pebbles of a quartzose conglomerate, and others of decom- 

 posed porphyry, the base consisting of granular felspar, with 

 crystals of common felspar. It is not improbable that good 

 millstones might be obtained from the range of Nundavvar. 

 The grass was, fortunately, much better here than at the last 

 camp. 



Feh. 20. — During the night a heavy thunder-storm broke 

 over us, and was accompanied by so much rain, that the ground 

 was too soft in the morning for us to proceed. I accordingly 

 halted till one o'clock. We then succeeded in crossing the 

 brook, immediately above our encampment, and continued, 

 first southward to avoid a scrub, and then almost east. On 

 a portion of open ground, the progress of the party was slow 

 enough, but in an open kind of scrub, where I hoped to have 

 got on better, the ground proved to be still less favourable, 

 for water lay in hollows, which at any season might have 

 been soft, and were then impassable. The cattle at length 

 could draw no longer, the carts sinking to the axles ; by at- 

 taching a double, team, however, and drawing each cart 

 successively forward to our intended camp, we effected the 



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