"We are now not more than two hundred and fifteen feet above the sea,
with a declining country to the north-west, and the general dip of the
continent to the south-west. What is the natural inference where there is
not a single river emptying itself upon the coast, but that there is an
internal basin? Such a country can only be penetrated by cool calculation
and determined perseverance. I have sat down before it as a besieger
before a fortress, to make my approaches with the same systematic
regularity. I must cut hay and send forage and water in advance, as far
as I can. I have the means of taking sixteen days' water and feed for two
horses and three men; and if I can throw my supplies one hundred miles in
advance, I shall be able to go two hundred miles more beyond that point,
at the rate of thirty miles a-day, one of us walking whilst two rode.
Surely at such a distance some new feature will open to reward our
efforts! My own opinion is, that an inland sea will bring us up ere
long--then how shall we get the boat upon it? 'Why,' you will say,
'necessity is the mother of invention.' You will find some means or
other, no doubt; and so we will. However, under any circumstances, depend
upon it I will either lift up or tear down the curtain which hides the
interior from us, so look out for the next accounts from me as of the
most interesting kind, as solving this great problem, or shutting the
door to discovery from this side the continent for ever.

"P.S. Poole has just returned from the ranges. I have not time to write
over again. He says that there are high ranges to N. and N.W. and
water,--a sea extending along the horizon from S.W. by W., to ten E. of
N. in which there are a number of islands and lofty ranges as far as the
eye can reach. What is all this? Are we to be prosperous? I hope so; and
I am sure you do. To-morrow we start for the ranges, and then for the
waters,--the strange waters on which boat never swam, and over which flag