Returning To The Horses, We Turned Southerly To The Most Westerly Creek That Issues From The Range.

I found some water up at the head of it in rock-holes; but it was so far up easterly, that we could not have been more than five or six miles across the hills from our last night's encampment at the Circus.

There was only a poor supply of water in two small holes, which could not last longer than three days at the most. The thermometer ranged up to 104 degrees to-day. Some of the horses are now terribly footsore. I would shoe them, only that we are likely to be in the sandhills again immediately. I did not exactly know which way to go. Mr. Tietkens and I ascended the highest hill in this part of the range. I had yesterday seen something like the top of a ridge south-westerly; I now found it was part of a low distant range, and not of a very promising nature. There was a conspicuous mountain, which now bore north-east about fifty miles away, and I fancied I saw the refracted tops of other ranges floating in the mirage. I thought, from the mountain just mentioned, I might discover others, which might lead me away to the west. Up to the present time we had always called this, in consequence of its bearing when first seen, the North-west Mountain. I thought a change of country might be met with sooner in a north or north-westerly direction than in a west or south-westerly one, as the sources of the Murchison River must be met somewhere in the former direction.

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