level, triodia ground, dotted with a few clumps of the desert oak,
giving a most pleasing appearance to the eye, but its reality is
startlingly different, keeping, as it were, the word of promise to the
eye, but breaking it to the hope. While the horses were being
collected this morning I ascended Mount Buttfield, and found that
ranges continued to the west for a considerable distance. I now
decided to make for a notch or fall in the main range we had left,
which now bore nearly west, as there appeared to be a creek issuing
from the hills there. Travelling over casuarina sandhills and some
level triodia ground, we found there was a creek with eucalypts on it,
but it was quite evident that none of the late showers had fallen
there. Hardly any grass was to be found, the ground being open and
stony, with thorny vegetation.

In the main channel we could only find deep, rocky, dry basins, but up
a small branch gorge I found three small basins with a very limited
supply of water, not sufficient for my horses both now and in the
morning, so we thought it better that they should do without it
to-night. Above the camp there was a kind of pound, so we put all the
horses up there, as it was useless to let them ramble all over the
country in the night. The ants were excessively troublesome here. I
could not find sufficient shade for the thermometer to-day, but kept
it as cool as I could for fear of its bursting.

This glen, or rather the vegetation which had existed in it, had been
recently burned by the natives, and it had in consequence a still more
gloomy and dreary appearance. I called it by its proper name, that is
to say, Desolation Glen.

I could get no rest last night on account of the ants, the wretches