In passing through the plains, which were yesterday so arid and dry, I found immense pools, nay almost large reaches of water lodged in the hollows, and in which boats might have floated.  Such was the result of only an hour or two’s rain, whilst the ground itself, formerly so hard, was soft and boggy in the extreme, rendering progress much slower and more fatiguing to the horses than it otherwise would have been.  By steadily persevering we made a stage of thirty-five miles, but were obliged to encamp at night some miles short of the little height I had been steering for.

During our ride we passed several dry watercourses at five, ten, twenty-five, thirty, and thirty-five miles from our last encampment.  The last we halted upon with good feed for the horses, and rainwater lodged everywhere.  All these watercourses took their course to the north, emptying and losing themselves in the plains.  In the evening heavy showers again fell, and the night set in very dark.

September 2.—­After travelling seven miles we ascended Mount Distance, and from it I could see that the hills now bore S. and S.E. and were getting much lower, so that we were rapidly rounding their northern extremity.  To the north and north-east were seen only broken fragments of table lands, similar to what I found near the lake to the north-west; the lake itself, however, was nowhere visible, and I saw that I should have another day’s hard riding before I could satisfactorily determine its direction.  Upon descending I steered for a distant low haycock-like peak in the midst of one of the table-topped fragments; from this rise I expected the view would be decisive, and I named it Mount Hopeless.—­From Mount Distance it bore E. 25 degrees N.

Crossing many little stony ridges, and passing the channel of several watercourses, I discovered a new and still more disheartening feature in the country, the existence of brine springs.  Hitherto we had found brackish and occasionally salt water in some of the watercourses, but by tracing them up among the hills, we had usually found the quality to improve as we advanced, but now the springs were out in the open plains, and the water poisoned at its very source.

Occasionally round the springs were a few coarse rushes, but the soil in other respects was quite bare, destitute of vegetation, and thickly coated over with salt, presenting the most miserable and melancholy aspect imaginable.  We were now in nearly the same latitude as that in which Captain Sturt had discovered brine springs in the bed of the Darling, and which had rendered even that river so perfectly salt that his party could not make use of it.

September 2.—­At thirty-five miles we reached the little elevation I had been steering for, and ascended Mount Hopeless, and cheerless and hopeless indeed was the prospect before us.  As I had anticipated, the view was both extensive and decisive.  We were now past all the ranges; and for three quarters of the compass, extending from south, round by east and north, to west, the horizon was one unbroken level, except where the fragments of table land, or the ridge of the lake, interrupted its uniformity.