to-morrow. Thermometer 96 degrees, sky overcast, rain imminent.

During the night of the 18th of September a few heat-drops of rain
fell. I sent Robinson away to the plain camp, feeling sure he would
find the rover there. A hot wind blew all day, the sand was flying
about in all directions. Robinson got the horse at last at the plain,
and I took special care to find a pair of hobbles for him for this
night at all events. The flies were an intolerable nuisance, not that
they were extraordinarily numerous, but so insufferably pertinacious.
I think the tropic fly of Australia the most abominable insect of its
kind. From the summit of the hill I ascended on Sunday, I found the
line of mountains still ran on to the west, the furthest hills
appeared fifty miles away. As they extend so far, and are the
principal features in sight, I shall follow them, in hopes of meeting
some creek, or river, that may carry me on to the west. It is a
remarkable fact that such high hills as I have been following should
send out no creek whose course extends farther than ten or twelve
miles. I could trace the creek I am now on by its timber for only a
few miles, its course appearing south of west. The country in its
immediate neighbourhood is open, and timbered with fine casuarina
trees; the grass is dry and long, and the triodia approaches to within
a quarter of a mile of it. The line of hills I previously mentioned as
running along to the south of us, we had now run out. I named them
Gardiner's Range, after a friend of Mr. Carmichael's. There is,
however, one small isolated hill, the furthest outpost of that line,
some three miles away to the south-west; the creek may probably take a
bend down towards it. I called it Mount Solitary. This creek is rather
well timbered, the gum-trees look fresh and young, and there is some
green herbage in places, though the surface water has all disappeared.