and would not allow them to approach.  They were not armed, but carried red bags.  The food of the natives here, as in other parts of the interior, appeared to be seeds of various kinds.  They had even been amongst the spinifex gathering the seed of the mesembryanthemum, of which they must obtain an abundant harvest.  The weather, a little before this time, had been very cold, but was now getting warmer every day.  As we had been advancing northwards towards the Tropics, I was not surprised at this.  The sky also was clear, generally speaking, but we had observed for the last two or three months that it was invariably more cloudy at the full of the moon than at any other period.

As our recent journey proved that in going to the westward on the 5th inst., we had wandered from the creek, and that instead of holding on in that direction, it had changed its course considerably to the eastward of north, I determined, after we should all have had a day of rest, to trace the channel upwards, in order to satisfy myself as to what became of it.  On the 10th, therefore, Mr. Browne and myself with Flood, mounted our horses, with the intention of tracing it up until we should have ascertained to what point it led.  We passed through some very pretty scenery in the proximity of the lagoon where it was lightly wooded, with an abundance of grass; and I could not help reflecting with how much more buoyant and pleasurable feelings we should have explored such a country, when compared with the monotonous and sterile region we had wandered over.  The transition however from the rich to the barren, from the picturesque to the contrary, was instantaneous.  From the grassy woodland we had been riding through, we debouched upon a barren plain without any vegetation, and after crossing a small channel, intersected a second much larger, a little beyond it.  Both creeks evidently traversed different parts of a large plain to the north, to which they had no apparent inlet.  There was a long tongue of sand, rather elevated, and running up into the plain, to the termination of which we rode, and then found ourselves, as it were, in the centre of an area, that was of great extent, and appeared to be bounded on all sides, excepting that by which we had entered, by sand hills.  Unconnected lines of trees marked the courses of the channels traversing it in different directions, but as the evening had far advanced, and my object had been rather to look round about me than to make any lengthened excursion, we returned to our little bivouac, with the intention of devoting another day to the fuller examination of the neighbourhood.

On the following day I proceeded with the whole party to the westward, anticipating that the salt formation existing to the north-west was merely local, and that by thus turning a few degrees from the course on which we had before gone, we should altogether avoid it.  I should not, however, have taken Joseph and Lewis with the cart, if I had not been somewhat apprehensive that the natives might visit the camp during my absence, and some misunderstanding be the consequence; for as we had hitherto found the country to the westward worse than at any other point, I was after all doubtful how far I should be able to push on.