ly without either grass or
water. The general elevation of this country was from three to five
hundred feet, and all of the tertiary deposit, with primary rocks
protruding at intervals.

The first permanent fresh water met with on the surface was a small
fresh-water lake, beyond the parallel of 123 degrees E.; but from Mount
Arden to that point, a distance of fully 800 miles in a direct line, none
whatever was found on the surface (if I except a solitary small spring
sunk in the rock at Streaky Bay). During the whole of this vast distance,
not a watercourse, not a hollow of any kind was crossed; the only water
to be obtained was by digging close to the sea-shore, or the sand-hills
of the coast, and even by that means it frequently could not be procured
for distances of 150 to 160 miles together. With the exception of the
Gawler Range, which lies between Streaky Bay and Mount Arden, this dreary
waste was one almost uniform table-land of fossil formation, with an
elevation of from three to five hundred feet, covered for the most part
by dense impenetrable scrubs, and varied only on its surface by
occasional sandy or rocky undulations.

What then can be the nature of that mysterious interior, bounded as it is
by a table-land without river or lakes, without watercourses or drainage
of any kind, for so vast a distance? Can it be that the whole is one
immense interminable desert, or an alternation of deserts and shallow
salt lakes like Lake Torrens? Conjecture is set at defiance by the
impenetrable arrangements of nature; where, the more we pry into her
secrets, the more bewildered and uncertain become all our speculations.

It has been a common and a popular theory to imagine the existence of an
inland sea, and this theory has been strengthened and confirmed by the
opinion of so talented, so experienced, and so enterprising a traveller
as my friend Captain Sturt, in its favour. That gentleman, with the noble
and disinterested enthusiasm by which he has ever been characterised, has
once more sacrificed the pleasure and quiet of domestic happiness, at the
shrine of enterprise and science. With the ardour of youth, and the
perseverance and judgment of riper years, he is even now traversing the
trackless wilds, and seeking to lift up that veil which has hitherto hung
over their recesses. May he be successful to the utmost of his wishes,
and may he again rejoin in health and safety his many friends, to forget
in their approbati