ee days, and provisions for one month, which was as much as the
cart would contain.

"My object being to ascertain the boundaries of the southern termination
of the eastern branch of Lake Torrens, as laid down by Mr. Eyre, and also
the nature of the country between Flinders range, as high as the parallel
of Mount Hopeless, and the meridian of 141 degrees, (the eastern limits
of the province), I kept at first a course as near N.N.E. as the nature
of the ground would admit, to ensure my not passing to the east of this
extremity of the lake; from whence I intended, if possible, to pursue a
line nearly north-east, as far as my time and the means at my disposal
would allow me, hoping to reach the high land laid down by Sir Thomas
Mitchell, on the right banks of the Darling, to the north of Mount Lyell,
and thus ascertain if any reasonable hope existed of penetrating at some
future time towards the interior from thence. The continued heavy rains
which had fallen for more than three weeks before my departure from
Adelaide, on the 8th July, and for nearly a fortnight afterwards, had
left the surface water in pools on the scrubby plains, and in some of the
ravines; but on proceeding north, it was evident that these rains had not
been there so general or so heavy, though by steering from point to point
of the hills, after crossing the Black Rock Range at Rowe's Creek, I was
able to find sufficient water for the horses, and to replenish the kegs
every second or third day. From this spot, the plains, as well as the
higher land, appeared evidently to dip away to the north-east, the barren
hills all diminishing in elevation, and the deep watercourses from
Flinders range all crossing the plains in that direction. In one of these
watercourses, the Siccus (lat. about 31 degrees 55 minutes), whose
section nearly equals that of the Murray, there were indications of not
very remote floods having risen to between twenty and thirty feet above
its bed, plainly marked by large gum-trees lodged in the forks of the
standing trees, and lying high up on its banks, on one of which I
remarked dead leaves still on the branches; and in another creek (Pasmore
River), lat. 31 degrees 29 minutes, a strong current was running at the
spot where we struck it (owing, I suppose, to recent heavy rains among
the hills from whence it has its source), but below this point the bed
was like that of all the other creeks, as dry as if no rain had ever
fallen, and with