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 grass that grew sparingly on some of them, nothing but rhagodia and atriplex flourished.

I had tried the temperature of boiling water at the spot where we stopped in the Rocky Glen, and found it to be 211 degrees and a small fraction; and as we descended a little after leaving the creek, we could not have been much above the sea level at one period of the day, although now more than 450 miles from the coast.  Our ascent to the top of the little range was very gradual; its sides destitute alike of trees and vegetation, being profusely covered with fragments of indurated quartz, thinly coated with oxide of iron:  when on the summit we could not have risen more than 120 feet.  It extended for some miles to the N.E., apparently parallel to the ranges from which we had come, whose higher points were visible from it, but to the north and west the horizon was as level as that of the ocean.  A dark gloomy sea of scrub without a break in its monotonous surface met our gaze, nor was there a new object of any kind to be seen indicative of a probable change of country.  Had other hills appeared to the north I should have made for them, but to have descended into such a district as that below me, seemed to be too hazardous an experiment at this stage of our journey.  I determined therefore to return to the main range,