I shook hands with Mr. Browne about half-past eight on the morning of the 9th of October, and left the depot camp at Fort Grey, with Mr. Stuart, Morgan and Mack, taking with me a ten-weeks’ supply of flour and tea.  I once more struck into the track I had already twice traversed, with the intention of turning to the north as soon as I should gain Strzelecki’s Creek.  As we rode over the sand-hills, they appeared as nothing to me, after the immense accumulations of sand we had crossed when Mr. Browne and I were out together.  We stopped short of the flat in which we had sunk the largest well on that occasion, to give the horses time to feed a little before sunset, and not to hurry them too much at starting.  The day was exceedingly warm, and the wind from the N.E.  A few heat-drops fell during the night, but the short thunder shower at the Depot on the Sunday did not appear to have extended so far as where we then were.  Nevertheless it would appear, that these low regions are simultaneously affected by any fall of rain; for there can be no doubt as to that of July having extended all over the desert interior, and the drizzling shower we had at the head of the northern Eyre’s Creek, just as we were about to retrace our steps, having been felt the same day at the camp.  I have just said that the day had been exceedingly hot, with the wind from the N.E., a quarter from whence we might naturally have expected that it would have blown warm; but I would observe, that before Mr. Browne and I passed the Stony Desert on our recent excursion, the winds from that point were unusually cold, and continued so until after we had crossed the Desert, and pushed farther up to the north, when they changed from cold to heat.  I will not venture any conjecture as to the cause of this, because I can give no solution to the question, but leave it to the ingenuity of my readers, who are as well able to judge of such a fact as myself.

I would also advert to a circumstance I neglected to mention in its proper place, but which may be as forcibly done now as at the time it occurred.  When Mr. Browne and I were on our recent journey to the north, after having crossed the Stony Desert, being then between it and Eyre’s Creek, about nine o’clock in the morning, we distinctly heard a report as of a great gun discharged, to the westward, at the distance of half a mile.  On the following morning, nearly at the same hour, we again heard the sound; but it now came from a greater distance, and consequently was not so clear.  When I was on the Darling, in lat. 30 degrees, in 1828, I was roused from my work by a similar report; but neither on that occasion, or on this, could I solve the mystery in which it was involved.  It might, indeed, have been some gaseous explosion, but I never, in the interior, saw any indication of such phenomena.