visited us with their wives and children,
and have behaved in the most quiet manner. We may attribute this in part
to our own treatment of the natives, and in part to Eyre's influence over
them, which is very extensive, and has been productive of great good. The
account the natives give of the distant interior is very discouraging. It
is nothing more however than what I expected. They say that beyond the
hills it is all sand and rocks; that there is neither grass or water, or
wood; and that it is awfully hot. This last feature appears to terrify
them. They say that they are obliged to take wood to the hills for fire,
and that they clamber up the rocks on the hills; that when there is water
there, it is in deep holes from which they are obliged to sponge it up
and squeeze it out to drink. I do not in truth think that any of the
natives have been beyond the hills, and that the country is perfectly
impracticable.

"We are now not more than two hundred and fifteen feet above the sea,
with a declining country to the north-west, and the general dip of the
continent to the south-west. What is the natural inference where there is
not a single river emptying itself upon the coast, but that there is an
internal basin? Such a country can only be penetrated by cool calculation
and determined perseverance. I have sat down before it as a besieger
before a fortress, to make my approaches with the same systematic
regularity. I must cut hay and send forage and water in advance, as far
as I can. I have the means of taking sixteen days' water and feed for two
horses and three men; and if I can throw my supplies one hundred miles in
advance, I shall be able to go two hundred miles more beyond that point,
at the rate of thirty miles a-day, one of us walking whilst two rode.
Surely at such a distance some new feature will open to reward our
efforts! My own opinion is, that an inland sea will bring us up ere
long--then how shall we get the boat upon it? 'Why,' you will say,
'necessity is the mother of invention.' You will find some means or
other, no doubt; and so we will. However, under any circumstances, depend
upon it I will either lift up or tear down the curtain which hides the
interior from us, so look out for the next accounts from me as of the
most interesting kind, as solving this great problem, or shutting the
door to discovery from this side the continent for ever.

"P.S. Poole has just returned from the ranges. I have not time to