On the morning of the 14th Mr. Browne and I mounted our horses, and left the camp at 9 a.m., followed by the men I had selected, and crossing the grassy plain in a N.W. direction, soon found ourselves amidst sand hills and scrub.

As I have stated I had determined to preserve a course of 45 degrees to the west of north, or in other words a north-west course, but the reader will readily believe that in such a country I had no distant object on which to rely.  We were therefore obliged to take fresh bearings with great precision from almost every sand-hill, for on the correctness of these bearings, together with our latitude, we had to depend for our true position.  We were indeed like a ship at sea, without the advantage of a steady compass.

Throughout the whole day of our departure from the camp we traversed a better country than that between it and Lake Torrens, insomuch that there was more grass.  Sand ridges and flats succeeded each other, but the former were not so broken and precipitous or the latter so barren, as on our line to the westward, and about four miles from the camp we passed a pool of water to our right.  At five miles we observed a new melaleuca, similar to the one I had remarked when to the north with Joseph, growing on the skirts of the flats, but the shrubs for the most part consisted of hakea and mimosae with geum and many other minor plants.  For a time the ridges were smooth on their sides, and a quantity of young green grass was springing up on them.  At nine miles we crossed some stony plains, and halted after a ride of 26 miles without water.

On the 15th a strong and bitterly cold wind blew from the westward as we passed through a country differing in no material respect from that of the day before.  Spinifex generally covered the sand ridges, which looked like ocean swells rising before us, and many were of considerable height.  At six miles we came to a small pool of water, where we breakfasted.  On leaving this we dug a hole and let the remainder of the water into it, in the hope of its longer continuance, and halted after a long journey in a valley in which there was a kind of watercourse with plenty of water, our latitude being 28 degrees 21 minutes 39 seconds.  Before we left this place we cut a deep square hole, into which as before we drained the water, that by diminishing its surface we might prevent the too speedy evaporation of it, in case of our being forced back from the want of water in the interior, since that element was becoming more scarce every day.  We saw but little change in the character of the country generally as we rode through it, but observed that it was more open to the right, in which direction we passed several extensive plains.  There were heaps of small pebbles also of ironstone and quartz on some of the flats we crossed.  We halted at the foot of a sand hill, where there was a good deal of grass, after a vain search for water, of which we did not see a drop during the day.  The night