At Mount Hopeless the variation was 4 degrees E., at Mount Arden it was 7 degrees 24 minutes E. Now if this variation be applied proportionably to all the courses and bearings as marked down in the original chart, commencing from Mount Arden, it will be found that Mount Serle will be brought by my map very nearly in longitude to where Captain Frome places it. [Note 30 at end of para.] Our latitudes appear to agree exactly.  The second point upon which some difference appears to exist between Captain Frome’s report and mine is the character of Lake Torrens itself, which Captain Frome thought might more properly be called a desert.  This, it will be observed, is with reference to its south-east extremity—­a point I never visited, and which I only saw once from Mount Serle; a point, too, which from the view I then had of it, distant although it was, even at that time seemed to me to be “apparently dry,” and is marked as such in Arrowsmith’s chart, published from the sketch alluded to.

[Note 30:  This has been done by Arrowsmith in the map which accompanies these volumes;—­to which Mr. Arrowsmith has also added Captain Frome’s route from the original tracings.]

There is, however, a still greater, and more singular difference alluded to in Captain Frome’s report, which it is necessary to remark; I mean that of the elevation of the country.  On the west side of Flinders range, for 200 miles that I traced the course of Lake Torrens, it was, as I have observed, girded in its whole course by a steep ridge, like a sea-shore, from which you descended into a basin, certainly not above the level of the sea, possibly even below it (I had no instruments with me to enable me to ascertain this,) the whole bed consisted of mud and water, and I found it impossible to advance far into it from its boggy nature.  On the east side of Flinders range, Captain Frome found the lake a desert, 300 feet above the level of the sea, [Note 31:  By altitude deduced from the temperature of boiling water.] and consisting of “loose and drifting sand,” and “low sandy ridges, very scantily clothed with stunted scrub on their summits.”  Now, by referring to Captain Frome’s chart and report, it appears that the place thus described was nearly thirty miles south of Mount Serle, and consequently twenty miles south of that part of the bed of Lake Torrens which I had seen from that hill.  It is further evident, that Captain Frome had not reached the basin of Lake Torrens, and I cannot help thinking, that if he had gone further to the north-east, he would have come to nearly the same level that I had been at on the western side of the hills.  There are several reasons for arriving at this conclusion.  First, the manner in which the drainage is thrown off from the east side of Flinders range, and the direction which the watercourses take to the north-east or north; secondly, because an apparent connection was traceable in the course of the lake, from the heights in Flinders range, nearly all the way round it; thirdly, because the loose sands and low sandy ridges crowned with scrub, described by Captain Frome, were very similar to what I met with near Lake Torrens in the west side, before I reached its basin.