"On Returning To The Depot, I Moved The Party Down To Mount Bryan, And Made Another Attempt On The 25th

August, with Mr. Henderson, and one man leading a pack-horse, to the north-east, hoping, from the heavy rains

Which had fallen during the past two months, to find sufficient water in the ravines to enable me to push on for several days. The second day, I crossed the high range I had observed from the Black Rock Hills and Mount Bryan, for the southern termination of which Colonel Gawler steered when he left the northern bend of the Murray in December, 1839; but though these hills had an elevation of twelve hundred or fourteen hundred feet above the plain, there was no indication of rain having fallen there since the deluge. This want of water prevented my proceeding further to the north-east; but from the summit of the highest of these hills (Mount Porcupine,) I had a clear view of the horizon in every direction, and a more barren, sterile country, cannot be imagined.

"The direction of the dividing ridge between the basin of the Murray and the interior desert plain was generally about north-east from the Black Rock Hills (the highest point north of Mount Bryan,) gradually decreasing in elevation, and, if possible, increasing in barrenness. The summits of those hills I found invariably rock - generally sandstone - the lower slopes covered with dense brush, and the valleys with low scrub, with occasional small patches of thin wiry grass. I was obliged to return on the third day, and reached the foot of Mount Bryan on the fourth evening, at the southern extremity of which hill the horses were nearly bogged in the soft ground, though only fifty miles distant from land where the dust was flying as if in the midst of summer.

"It appears to me certain, from the result of these different attempts, that there is no country eastward of the high land extending north from Mount Bryan, as far as Mount Hopeless, a distance of about three hundred miles, as far as the meridian of 141 degrees (and probably much beyond it), available for either agricultural or pastoral purposes; and that, though there may be occasional spots of good land at the base of the main range on the sources of the numerous creeks flowing from thence towards the inland desert, these must be too limited in extent to be of any present value.

"The nature of the formation of the main range I found generally iron-stone, conglomerate and quartz, with sandstone and slate at the lower elevation. At the points of highest elevation from Mount Bryan northward, igneous rocks of basaltic character protruded from below, forming rugged and fantastic outlines.

"At one spot, particularly, about 30 degrees, there were marked indications of volcanic action, and several hollows resembling small craters of extinct volcanoes, near one of which we found a small spring of water, maintaining always a temperature of about 76 degrees Farenheit, when the thermometer standing in water in the kegs stood at 52 degrees, and in the atmosphere at 54 degrees.

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