SCARCITY OF WATER THERE.

Throughout that extent we neither saw a single watercourse nor discovered the least indication of water having lodged there during any season.  At eleven miles from the camp we crossed a low ridge of granite (named Tarratta) a hopeful circumstance to us as promising a primitive range of hills between the Darling and Lachlan, and because in a crevice of this granite our aboriginal guide found some water.  The desert tract we crossed was in other respects unvaried except that, in one place, we passed through four miles of a kind of scrub which presented difficulties of a new character.  The whole of it consisted of bushes of a dwarf species of eucalyptus, doubtless E. dumosa (A.  Cunningham) which grew in a manner that rendered it impossible to proceed, except in a very sinuous direction, and then with difficulty by pushing our horses between stiffly grown branches.  Where no bushes grew the earth was naked, except where some tufts of a coarse matted weed resembling Spinifex impeded the horses, but seemed to be intended by Providence to bind down these desert sands.  We saw blue ranges on our right, and I hoped that before we ascended Mount Granard we should cross some watercourse coming from them; but nothing of the kind appeared and, after traversing a dry sandy flat, we began to ascend.  Finding myself separated from the summit, after we had climbed some way, by a deep rocky ravine, and being in doubt about obtaining water, I sent the people with the horses to encamp in the valley to which that ravine opened, with directions to look for water while daylight lasted.

VIEW FROM THE SUMMIT.

Meanwhile I proceeded to the summit with one of the men and the native.  I arrived there and, just before the sun went down, obtained an uninterrupted view of the western horizon; but the scene was inconclusive as to the existence of such a dividing range as I hoped to see.  Ridges and summits appeared abundantly enough, but they were not of a bold or connected character, and I did not obtain upon the whole a better idea than I previously had respecting the extension of that singular group of hills to the westward.  I stood upon the best height however for carrying on my angles in that direction.  To the eastward I saw Hurd’s Peak and Bolloon, also Goulburn’s and Macquarie’s ranges, Mount Torrens, and Mount Aiton of Oxley.  The last hill appeared alone on the horizon, in a south-south-east direction as shown in his map.  But the most commanding point was Yerrarar, the highest apex of Goulburn range, forming with Bolloon and this station an almost equilateral triangle of about 30 miles a side.

The features before us terminated rather abruptly towards the south like cliffs of tableland, and seemed to mark out the basin of the Lachlan; but beyond those parts overlooking Mr. Oxley’s route I could obtain no view, although I perceived that I might from Yerrarar.

ENCAMP THERE.