were far
away; awakening, for a time at least, a train of happier thoughts and
kindlier feelings than we had for a long time experienced.

On the 26th, I found that our horses and sheep were falling off so much
in condition, from the scarcity of grass, and its dry and sapless
quality, that it became absolutely necessary for us to remove elsewhere;
I had already had all our surplus stores and baggage headed up in casks,
or packed in cases, and carefully buried (previously covered over with a
tarpaulin and with bushes to keep them from damp), near the sand-hills,
and to-day I moved on the party for five miles to the well in the plains;
the grass here was very abundant, but still dry, and without much
nourishment; the water was plentiful, but brackish and awkward to get at,
being through a hole in a solid sheet of limestone, similar to that
behind Point Brown. Upon cleaning it out and deepening it a little, it
tasted even worse than before, but still we were thankful for it.

The geological character of the country was exactly similar to that we
had been in so long, entirely of fossil formation, with a calcareous
oolitic limestone forming the upper crusts, and though this was
occasionally concealed by sand on the surface, we always were stopped by
it in digging; it was seemingly a very recent deposit, full of marine
shells, in every stage of petrifaction. Granite we had not seen for some
time, though I have no doubt that it occasionally protrudes; a small
piece, found near an encampment of the natives, and evidently brought
there by them, clearly proved the existence of this rock at no very great
distance, probably small elevations of granite may occasionally be found
among the scrubs, similar to those we had so frequently met with in the
same character of country. Another substance found at one of the native
encampments, and more interesting to us, not having been before met with,
was a piece of pure flint, of exactly the same character as the best gun
flint. This probably had been brought from the neighbourhood of the Great
Bight, in the cliffs of which Captain Flinders imagined he saw chalk, and
where I hoped that some change in the geological formation of the country
would lead to an improvement in its general appearance and character.

The weather had been (with the exception of one or two hot days)
unusually cold and favourable for the time of year. Our horses had
enjoyed a long rest, and though the dry state of the