five miles in breadth, but so full of cracks and fissures that we had great difficulty in crossing it.  Not-withstanding, however, that the cart fell constantly into them, we got it safely over.  Not finding any water under or near the trees I turned a little to the north, keeping wide of the creek; but, coming on its channel again at five miles, I halted, because there happened to be a little grass there, and we were fortunate enough, after some perseverance, to find a muddy puddle that served the horses, however unfit for our use.  From the appearance of the plain before us, I hardly anticipated success in our undertaking.  We had evidently arrived near the head of the creek, and I felt assured that if the features of the country here, were similar to those of other parts of the interior, we should, between where we then were, and some distant sand hills, again find ourselves travelling over a salt formation.  The evening had closed in with a cloudy sky, and the wind at W.N.W., and during the night we had two or three flying showers, but they were really in mockery of rain, nor was any vestige of it to be seen in the morning, which broke with a clear sky, and the wind from the S.E.

As soon as morning dawned we saddled our horses and made for the head of the plain, crossing bare and heavy ground until we neared the sand hills, when observing that I was leaving the creek, which I was anxious to trace up, we turned to the north-east for a line of gum-trees, but the channel was scarcely perceptible under them, and we had evidently run it out.  There were only two or three solitary trees to be seen to the north, at which point the plain was bounded by sand hills.  To the S.E. there was a short line of trees, from the midst of which the natives were throwing up a signal smoke, but as it would have taken me out of my way to have gone to them, I held on a N.N.W. course, and at the termination of the plain ascended a sand hill, though of no great height.  From it we descended a small valley, the sides of which were covered with samphire bushes, and the bottom by the dry white and shallow bed of a salt lagoon.  From this valley we passed into a plain, in which various kinds of salsolaceous productions were growing round shallow salty basins.  At a little distance from these, however, we stumbled upon a channel with some tolerable water in it, hid amongst rhagodia bushes, but the horses refused to drink.  This plain communicated with that we had just left, round the N.E. point of the sand hill we had crossed but there were no box-trees on it to mark the line of any creek or water; but the sand ridge forming its northern boundary was very high, and contrary to their usual lay, ran directly across our course, and as the ascent was long and gradual, so was it some time before we got to the top.  The view which then presented itself was precisely similar to the one I have already described, and from which we had before been obliged to retreat.  Long parallel lines of sandy ridges ran up northwards, further than we could see, and rose in the same manner on either side.  Their sides were covered with spinifex, but there was a clear space at the bottom of the valleys, and as there was really no choice we proceeded down one of them, for 12 miles, and then halted.