We now followed the course of the river for about two miles further and saw a considerable quantity of good land along its banks, clothed with feed for stock; but I cannot tell how far back this extends.

The river now ran away nearly due west under a low range of hills; and still adhering to my original plan I quitted its banks and continued my course straight for Perth, travelling in a south by east direction.  The next two and a half miles led us to the top of a low range.  The whole tract of country between this point and the river was arid and barren in the extreme, being devoid of all vegetation but a stunted prickly scrub, and on it we saw no signs either of animal life or water.  We here for the first time since quitting Moresby’s Flat-topped Range saw that the one to the east of us became well wooded, the interval between these two points having been completely bare of trees.

Barren country.

I now halted for about an hour and a half to rest the wearied men, and then again commenced our route over this barren waste.  For the next twelve miles we travelled down a gentle descent leading to a very deep valley, and late in the evening reached some dried up swamps where we made an ineffectual search for water; we however saw here some parakeets, and I was lucky enough to kill one which was about the size of a thrush; several of the men also got shots at these little birds, but without success.  As the day had been intensely hot and we had tasted no water since morning we suffered a great deal from want of it, but were at length compelled by darkness to lie down to rest without finding any.

Dry bed of the Smith river.

April 16.

We had not travelled above two miles this morning in an east-south-east direction when I found that we had reached the bottom of the valley into which we had yesterday evening commenced our descent.  In this valley lay the dried up bed of a considerable stream, which I have named the Smith after my unfortunate friend.  Its direction was from north-east to south.

Long and utter destitution of food and water.  Sufferings from thirst.

As we were now suffering a good deal from thirst we made a search in both directions along the bed, but although there were many pools (some of them being twelve or fourteen feet deep) we could not find the slightest indication of water having stood in them for a considerable time:  in the bottom of one of the deepest of these pools was a native well, dug to the depth of about seven feet, but even at this distance below the surface we could see no signs whatever of water.  There was much good land in the valley through which this watercourse wound, but all was barren and arid.  In the course of the morning we had seen a flight of cockatoos coming from the eastward down the valley in which the bed of the river lay, which at the time made me imagine that water would be found in that direction in the interior, and the natives subsequently stated that such was the case, but our circumstances would not admit such a deviation from our course in a search which if unsuccessful would have proved fatal.