Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/124

a day of rest, as well as of ablution, of which the whole party were in need; our store of linen being necessarily very limited, almost like Falstaff's—"one shirt for superfluity, and one for use,"—it became necessary to wash; my stock was pretty large, consisting of four shirts, four pair of stockings, two pair of trousers, three pair of shoes, two coats, a large pair of worsted stockings, with leather soles, which I found very comfortable to sleep in; a straw hat for the day, and a blue cap for the night, with the hammock, blankets, and cloak already mentioned. In fine weather we preferred strewing the tops of the grass tree, which resemble rushes, on the ground, and so sleeping with our feet to the fire. I shall give you a short account of the tract we have explored: it is a range of hilly country, about fifty miles broad in one place, over which you must pass in order to arrive at a more open, level, and grassy country, which appears to continue in the interior, and to preserve the same uniformity of character, as far as has been examined in that direction. The hills on the range are principally covered on the surface with the hard red sandstone, or ironstone already mentioned, either in lumpy fragments, or broken into coarse gravel; in some places, granite appears in large solid masses, or hillocks; there is a good deal of coarse herbage, but little grass, except in a few of the valleys. Many prickly shrubs abound, differing