We left the creek on a W. by N. course, the direction of the sandy ridges being to the N.N.W., so that we were obliged to cross them successively.  I soon found that the country was infinitely worse than I expected.  We had scarcely passed a kind of marsh at some little distance from the creek, when we once more crossed salty valleys, between high sandy ridges.  The wind blowing fresh from the south, peppered us with showers of sand as we ascended the last, and carried the salt in the valleys like drifting snow from one end of them to the other, filling our eyes and entering the pores of the skin, so as to cause us much annoyance.  Before noon we had crossed eighteen of these sandy undulations, and were on the top of another, having fairly tired the horses in the ascent, and I consequently pulled up, to wait for the cart, but the heavy nature of the country had so shaken it, that the men were obliged to stop; and on examining the spokes of the wheels, I really wondered how they could have got on so far, and expected that in another half mile every one of them would be shaken out, and the cart itself fall to the ground.  The spokes had shrunk to such a degree that they did not hold in the felloes and axles by more than two or three 10ths of an inch.  I felt it necessary therefore to turn back to the creek, to get new spokes of such wood as we could procure, there not being a tree of any kind visible near us; but it was late ere we got back to water, and once more took up our position on the same ground we had quitted in the morning.  The country we had passed was certainly such as to deter me from making a second attempt in the same quarter, and to confirm my impression that from some cause or other the interior to the westward was worse than anywhere else.  Lewis, the moment we got back to the creek, set to work in good earnest, with Joseph’s assistance, to repair the cart, but it necessarily delayed us longer than prudence would have allowed; in the meantime, however, we were at least deriving benefit from rest.

On mature consideration, I thought the quarter in which we should have most chance of success would be a course a little to the east of north, for the day Mr. Browne and I rode up the creek it appeared to me that the country was more open in that direction.  I thought it better, however, to make for the sandy tongue of land in the centre of the plain, in which the creek appeared to take its rise, and to be guided by circumstances both in the examination of that plain, and the course I should ultimately pursue.  The cart being fit for use on the morning of the 12th we again left the creek, and at four miles on an east by north course arrived at the sand hill to which I desired to go; from that point I proceeded to the N.N.W., that appearing to be the general direction of the creek upwards; but as there were lines of box-trees on both sides of us, those to our left being denser than the right, I moved for them over a plain of about