Finding the river now trended not only northerly, but even east of north, we had to go in that direction, passing over some very high sandhills, where we met the Finke at almost right angles. Although the country was quite open, it was impossible to see the river channel, even though fringed with rows of splendid gum-trees, for any distance, as it became hidden by the high sandhills. I was very reluctant to cross, on account of the frightfully boggy bed of the creek, but, rather than travel several miles roundabout, I decided to try it. We got over, certainly, but to see one's horses and loads sinking bodily in a mass of quaking quicksand is by no means an agreeable sight, and it was only by urging the animals on with stock-whips, to prevent them delaying, that we accomplished the crossing without loss. Our riding horses got the worst of it, as the bed was so fearfully ploughed up by the pack-horses ahead of them. The whole bed of this peculiar creek appears to be a quicksand, and when I say it was nearly a quarter of a mile wide, its formidable nature will be understood. Here a stream of slightly brackish water was trickling down the bed in a much narrower channel, however, than its whole width; and where the water appears upon the surface, there the bog is most to be apprehended. Sometimes it runs under one bank, sometimes under the opposite, and again, at other places the water occupies the mid-channel. A horse may walk upon apparently firm sand towards the stream, when, without a second's warning, horse and rider may be engulfed in quicksand; but in other places, where it is firmer, it will quake for yards all round, and thus give some slight warning.