e by high sandy ridges, covered with
spinifex, excepting on their summits, which were perfectly bare. The view
from them both to the eastward and westward was, as it were, over a sandy
sea; ridge after ridge succeeding each other as far as the eye could
stretch the vision. To the north the flat appeared to terminate at a low
sand hill bearing 335 degrees or N.N.W. 1/2 W.

When we again came on the creek, there was an abundance both of water and
grass in its bed, but just above, the channel suddenly turned to the N.E.
and in again keeping wide of it to avoid the inequalities of the ground,
we arrived at the little sand hill that had previously bounded our view,
and on ascending it, found that immediately beneath us, there was a clear
small lake, covered with wild fowl. The colour of the water immediately
betrayed its quality, and we found on tasting that it was too salt to
drink. An extensive grassy flat extended to the westward of the lake,
bounded by box-trees, and the channel of the creek still held its course
to the N.E. I could not therefore but suppose, that this was a junction
from that point, and therefore determined on passing to the opposite
side, in anticipation that I should again come on our old friend amidst
the trees. We accordingly crossed at the bottom of the little lake, and
in so doing found amidst the other herbage two withered stalks of millet.

The grassy woodland continued for several miles, and as it was evidently
subject to flood, we were in momentary expectation of seeing a denser
mass of foliage before us, as indicating the course of the creek, but we
suddenly debouched upon open plains, bounded by distant sand hills. There
was not now a tree to be seen, but samphire bushes were mixed with the
polygonum growing round about; as the changes however in this singular
and anomalous region had been so sudden and instantaneous, I still held
on my course, but the farther I advanced into the plains the more did the
ground betray a salt formation.

We halted an hour after sunset, under a sand hill about 16 miles distant
from the creek, without having succeeded in our search for water, for
although we passed several muddy pools at which the birds still continued
to drink they were too thick for our animals.

The prospect from the top of the sand hill under which we had formed our
bivouac, was the most cheerless and I may add the most forbidding of any
that our eyes had wandered over, during this long an