that the heat bakes the soil so that nothing can force itself through.  There was little, if any grass to be seen; but the mesembryanthemum reappeared upon it, with other salsolaceous plants.  The former was of a new variety, with flowers on a long slender stalk, heaps of which had been gathered by the natives for the seed.  Of the timber of these regions there was none; a few gum-trees near the creeks, with box-trees on the flats, and a few stunted acacia and hakea on the small hills, constituted almost the whole.  Water boiled on this plain at 212 degrees; that is to say at our camp were we slept, about two miles advanced into it, but the plain extended about five miles further to the eastward.  After crossing this on the following morning, we traversed a country which Mr. Browne informed me was very similar to that near Lake Torrens.  It consisted of sand banks, or drifts, with large bare patches at intervals:  the whole bearing testimony to the violence of the rains that must sometimes deluge it.  We then traversed a succession of flats (I call them so because they did not deserve the name of plains) separated from each other by patches of red sand and clay, that were not more than a foot and a half above the surface of the flats.  At nine miles the country became covered with low scrub, and we soon after passed the dry bed of a lagoon, about a mile in circumference, on which there was a coating of salt and gypsum resting on soft black mud.  About a mile from this we passed a new tree, similar to one we had seen on the Cawndilla plain.  From this point the land imperceptibly rose, until at length we found ourselves on some sandy elevations thickly covered with scrub of acacia, almost all dead, but there was a good deal of grass around them, and the spot might at another season, and if the trees had been in leaf, have looked pretty.  We pushed through this scrub, the soil being a bright red sand for nine miles, when we suddenly found ourselves at the base of a small stony hill, of about fifty feet in height.  From the summit we overlooked the region round about.  To the eastward, as a medium point, it was covered with a dense scrub, that extended to the base of a range of hills, distant about 33 miles, the extremities of which bore 71 degrees and 152 degrees respectively from us.  But although the country under them was covered with brush, the hills appeared to be clear and denuded of brushes of any kind.  Our position here was about 138 miles from the Darling, and about 97 from the Depot.  My object in this excursion had been to ascertain the characteristic of the country between us and the Darling, but I did not think it necessary to run any risks with my horses, by pushing on for the hills, as I could not have reached them until late the following day, when in the event of not finding water, their fate would have been sealed; for we could not have returned with them to the creek.  They had already been two days without, if I except the little we had