At Twenty Miles We Actually Sighted A Low Hill.

Here was a change.

At four miles farther we reached its foot; there were salt lake depressions nearly all round us. Here we found a small quantity of the little pea-vetch, which is such excellent food for the camels.

From the summit of this little hill, the first I had met for nearly 800 miles - Mount Finke was the last - another low scrubby ridge lay to the westward, and nearly across our course, with salt lakes intervening, and others lying nearly all round the horizon. At the foot of the little hill we encamped. A few hundred acres of ground were open, and there were clay-pans upon it, but no rain could have fallen here for ages I should imagine. The hill was only 200 feet high, and it was composed of granite stones. I was glad, however, to see some granite crop out, as we were now approaching the western coast-line formation; this I have always understood to be all granite, and it was about time that something like a change of country should occur. The following day, in making for the low range, we found ourselves caught in the ramifications of some of the saline depressions, and had to go a long way round to avoid them. Just before we reached the low range we passed the shore of another salt lake, which had a hard, firm, and quartz-pebbly bed, and we were enabled to travel across it to the hills; these we reached in sixteen miles from our last camp.

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