who were acquainted with the
country to the north-west. My inquiries upon this point were particular;
but they knew of no sea. They asserted that there was mud out in that
direction, and that a party would be unable to travel; from which I
inferred either that some branch of the Darling spread out its waters
there in time of flood, or that Lake Torrens itself was stretching out in
the direction indicated. Thirdly, I hold it physically impossible that a
sea can exist in the place assigned to it, in as much as during an
expedition, undertaken by the Surveyor-general of the Colony, in
September, 1843, that officer had attained a position which would place
himself and Mr. Poole at two opposite points, upon nearly the same
parallel of latitude; but about 130 miles of longitude apart, in a low
level country, and in which, therefore, the ranges of their respective
vision from elevations would cross each other, and if there was a sea,
Captain Frome must have seen it as well as Mr. Poole; again, I myself had
an extensive and distant view to the north-east and east from Mount
Hopeless, a low hill, about ninety miles further north than Captain
Frome's position, but a little more east; yet there was nothing like a
sea to be seen from thence, the dry and glazed-looking bed of Lake
Torrens alone interrupting the monotony of the desert.

There are still some few points connected with our knowledge of the
outskirts of the interior which leave great room for speculation, and
might lead to the opinion that it is not altogether a low or a desert
region. The facts which have more immediately come under my own
observation, are connected, first with the presence of birds belonging to
a higher and better country in the midst of a desert region, and
secondly, with the line of route taken by the Aborigines in spreading
over the continent, as deduced from a coincidence or dissimilarity of the
manners, customs, or languages of tribes remotely apart from one another.

With respect to the presence of birds in a region such as they do not
usually frequent, I may state that at Mount Arden, near the head of
Spencer's Gulf, swans were seen taking their flight high in the air, to
the north, as if making for some river or lake they were accustomed to
feed at. At the Frome river, where it spreads into the plains to the
north of Flinders range; four white cockatoos were found flying about
among the trees, although those birds had not been met with for 200