We could gain no information from her, she was so much alarmed, but not
long after parting with her we came to a puddle of water in the plains,
and encamped for the night. Our stage had been a tortuous, but not a long
one, and we halted early in the day, the latitude was 30 degrees 58
minutes S. by an altitude of the sun at noon.

After taking some refreshment, I walked to a rise about three miles off
at N. 40 degrees E. from which I took several bearings, and among them I
set Mount Deception at N. 25 degrees W., I then examined several of the
gorges between the front hills, where the banks were broken away, and to
my great dismay found in all of them salt mixed with the sand, the clay,
and even the rocks; whilst in the bed of the watercourse, the salt water
tea-tree was making its appearance, a shrub I had never before seen under
Flinders range, and one which never grows where the soil is not of a very
saline nature, and generally only where the water is too brackish for use.

The beds of the watercourses were in some places quite white and glazed
with encrustations of salt, where the rains had lodged, and the water had
evaporated. Some of the cliffs which I examined presented sections of 40
and 50 feet perpendicular height, in which layers of salt were embedded
from the very top to the bottom.

In such a country, what accommodation could I expect, or what hopes could
I entertain for the future, when the very water shed from the clouds
would not be drinkable after remaining a few hours on the ground?
Whichever way I turned myself, to the West, to the East, or the North,
nothing but difficulties met my view.

In one direction was an impracticable lake, skirted by heavy and scrubby
sand ridges; in another, a desert of bare and barren plains; and in a