trees consisted of a new species of casuarina, a new caparis, with some hakea, and several species of very pretty and fragrant flowering shrubs.  At twelve miles we changed our course to 135 degrees to the west of south, or N.W., and kept upon it for the remainder of the day, direct for a prominent hill in the ranges before us. [Note 7.  Coonbaralba Station, No. 2.] The hills Mr. Poole had visited then bore a few degrees to the east of north, distant from twelve to fourteen miles, and were much lower than those towards which we were going, continuing northwards.  The country as we advanced became more open and barren.  We traversed plains covered with atriplex and rhagodiae, in the midst of which there were large bare patches of red clay.  In these rain water lodges, but being exceedingly shallow they soon dry up and their surfaces become cracked and blistered.  From the point at which we changed our course the ground gradually rose, and at 26 miles we ascended a small sand hill with a little grass growing upon it.  From this hill we descended into and crossed a broad dry creek with a gravelly bed, and as its course lay directly parallel to our own, we kept in the shade of the gum-trees that were growing along its banks.  At about four miles beyond this point Topar called out to us to stop near a native well he then shewed us, for which we might in vain have hunted.  From this we got a scanty supply of bad water, after some trouble in cleaning and clearing it, insomuch that we were obliged to bale it out frequently during the night to obtain water for our horses.  This creek, like others, was marked by a line of gum-trees on either side; and from the pure and clean gravel in its bed, I was led to infer that it was subject to sudden floods.  We could trace the line of trees upon it running upwards to the N.W. close up to the foot of the ranges, and down southwards, until the channel seemed to be lost in the extensive flats of that depressed region.

Topar called this spot “Murnco Murnco.”  As the horses had fared indifferently during our stay, and he assured us there was a finer well higher up the creek, we pushed on at an early hour the next morning, keeping on the proper right bank of the creek, and having an open barren country to the south, with an apparent dip to the south-west; to our left, some undulations already noticed by us, assumed more the shape of hills.  The surface was in many places covered with small fragments of white quartz, which together with a conglomerate rock cropped out of the ground where it was more elevated.  There was nothing green to meet the eye, except the little grass in the bed of the creek itself, and a small quantity on the plains.