eight miles we descended to a flooded plain, scattered over with
stunted box-trees, the greater number being dead, and I may remark that
we generally found such to be the case on lands of a similar description;
a fact, it appears to me, that can only be accounted for from the
long-continued drought to which these unhappy regions are subject. These
flooded plains are generally torn to pieces by cracks of four, six, and
eight feet deep, of a depth, indeed, far below that at which I should
imagine trees draw their support; but the box-tree spreads its roots very
near the surface of the ground, having, I suppose, no prominent tap root,
and can therefore receive no moisture from such a soil as that in which
we so often found it in premature decay; the excess of moisture at one
time, and the want of it at another, must be injurious to trees and
plants of all kinds, and this circumstance may be a principal cause of
the deficiency of timber in the interior of Australia.

From the level, we ascended to sandy and grassy plains as before, but
they were now bounded by sandy ridges of a red colour, and partly covered
with spinifex. I really shuddered at the re-appearance of those solid
waves which I had hoped we had left behind, but such was not the case. At
six miles we arrived at the base, and ascending one of them, found that
it was flanked on both sides by others; the space between the ridges
being occupied by the white and dry beds of salt lagoons. The reader
will, I am sure, sympathise with me in these repeated disappointments,
for the very aspect of these dreaded deposits, if I may so call them,
withered hope. To whatever point of the compass I turned, whether to the
west, to the north, or to the east, these heart-depressing features
existed to damp the spirits of my men, and irresistibly to depress my
own; but it was not for me to repine under such circumstances, I had
undertaken a task, and in the performance of it had to take the country
as it laid before me, whether a Desert or an Eden. Still whatever moral
convictions we may have, we cannot always control our feelings. The
direction of the ridges was nearly north and south, somewhat to the
westward of the first point, so that at a distance of more than two
degrees to the eastward they almost preserved their parallelism. We rode
along the base of a ridge for about three miles, but as on ascending it
to take a survey, I observed that at about a mile beyond, it terminated,
a