distance from
us, but they were exceedingly wild and watchful. We found a pool under,
or rather shaded by the trees, of tolerable size, and much better than
the water nearer to the hills. Close to it also, on a sloping bank, there
was another more than half finished hut from which the natives could only
just have retreated, for they had left all their worldly goods behind
them; thus it appeared we had scared these poor people a second time from
their work. I was really sorry for the trouble we had unintentionally
given them, and in order to make up for it, I fastened my own knife with
a glittering blade, to the top of a spear that stood upright in front of
the hut; not without hopes that the owner of the weapon seeing we
intended them no harm, would come to us on our return from the hills.

Below this water-hole the creek sensibly diminished. Crossing and
abandoning it we struck away to the N.W. At about half a mile we entered
the scrub, which had indeed commenced from the water, but which at that
distance became thick. We were then in a perfect desert, from the scrub
we got on barren sandy flats, bounded at first by sandy ridges at some
little distance from each other, but the formation soon changed, and the
sand ridges succeeded each other like waves of the sea. We had no sooner
descended one than we were ascending another, and the excessive heat of
so confined a place oppressed us greatly. We had on our journey to the
westward found an abundance of grass on the sand ridges as well as the
flats; but in this desert there was not a blade to be seen. The ridges
were covered with spinifex, through which we found it difficult to force
a way, and the flats with salsolaceous productions alone. There were no
pine trees, but the brush consisted of several kinds of acacia,
casuarina, cassia, and hakeae, and these were more bushes than shrubs,
for they seldom exceeded our own height, and had leaves only at the
termination of their upper branches, all the under leaves having dropped
off, withered by the intensity of the reflected surface heat. At one we
stopped to rest the horses, but mounted again at half-past one, and
reached the hills at 5 p.m. The same dreary desert extended to their
base, only that as we approached the hills the flats were broader, and
the fall of waters apparently to the east. The surface of the flats was
furrowed by water, and there were large bare patches of red soil, but
with the exception of a flossy gr