McDouall Stuart was left in charge of the depot.  Dr. Browne accompanied the leader, and on the 14th of August a start was made.  For some distance, owing to the pools of surface water left by the recent rain, they had no difficulty in keeping a straightforward course.  The country they passed over consisted of large, level plains, intersected by sand-ridges; but they crossed numerous creeks with more or less water in all of them.  To one of these creeks Sturt gave the name of Strzelecki.  Finally they reached a well-grassed region which greatly cheered them with the prospect of success it held out.  Suddenly they were confronted with a wall of sand; and for nearly twenty miles they toiled over successive ridges.  Fortunately they found both water and grass, but the unexpected check to their brighter anticipations was depressing.  Nor did a walk to the extremity of one of the ridges serve to raise their spirits.

Sturt saw before him what he describes as an immense plain, of a dark purple hue, with a horizon like that of the sea, boundless in the direction in which he wished to proceed.  This was Sturt’s Stony Desert.  That night they camped within its dreary confines, and during the next day crossed an earthy plain, with here and there a few bushes of polygonum growing beside some straggling channel in which they occasionally found a little muddy rain-water remaining.  At night when they camped just before dusk, they sighted some hills to the north, and, on examining them through the telescope, they discerned dark shadows on the faces, as if produced by cliffs.  Next morning they made for these hills, in the hope of finding a change of country and feed for the horses, but they were disappointed.  Sand ridges in repulsive array confronted them once more.  “Even the animals,” writes Sturt, “appeared to regard them with dismay.”

Over plains and sand dunes, the former full of yawning cracks and holes, the party pushed on, subsisting on scanty pools of muddy water and fast-sinking native wells.  On the 3rd of September, Flood, the stockman who was riding in the lead, lifted his hat and waved it on high, calling to the others that a large creek was in sight.

When the main party came up, they feasted their eyes on a beautiful watercourse, its bed studded with pools of water and its banks clothed with grass.  This creek Sturt named Eyre’s Creek, and it was an important discovery in the drainage system of the region that he was then traversing.

Along this new-found watercourse, they were enabled to make easy stages for five days, when the course of the creek was lost; nor could any continuation be traced.  The lagoons, too, that were found a short distance from the banks, proved to be intensely salt.  Repeated efforts to continue his journey to other points of the compass only led Sturt amongst the terrible sandhills, their parallel rows separated by barren plains encrusted with salt.  Sturt now came to the erroneous conclusion that he had reached