July 10.--Our horses being much recruited I altered our course to-day to N. 5 degrees E. being the bearing of the most distant range to the northward, (subsequently named Mount Deception). We passed for the first ten miles through an open barren country, but found a puddle at which we watered our horses, and refilled the keg; we then entered heavy ridges of dense red sand lying nearly north and south, and having small barren plains between. There were a few stunted bushes upon the ridges and occasionally some small straggling pines. Lake Torrens still trended easterly, being occasionally seen from, and sometimes approaching near to our track. Emerging from the sandy ridges we again entered upon vast level plains covered with rhagodia. In the midst of these we came to the bed of a large dry watercourse, having good grass about it, but containing no water. I halted here for the day as our horses were not very thirsty. Upon examining the bed of the watercourse, I found traces of a rather recent and high flood; much drift being still left upon the bushes where it had been swept by the torrent; I could, however, find no water anywhere. A great many emus were seen during our ride, and I wounded one with my rifle, but did not get it. We found to-day a description of flower, which I had not seen before, white, and sweetly scented like the hawthorn, growing upon a low prickly bush near the watercourse. July 11.--To-day I left our course and rambled up the watercourse to examine its character and search for water, which however I could not find in its channel anywhere. Traces of natives were numerous and recent all the way as we went, till at last we came to where they had encamped the previous night, and where they had left a fire still fresh and burning. Proceeding onwards we came upon a single native, a female, young, but miserably thin and squalid, fit emblem of the sterility of the country. We could gain no information from her, she was so much alarmed, but not long after parting with her we came to a puddle of water in the plains, and encamped for the night. Our stage had been a tortuous, but not a long one, and we halted early in the day, the latitude was 30 degrees 58 minutes S. by an altitude of the sun at noon. After taking some refreshment, I walked to a rise about three miles off at N. 40 degrees E. from which I took several bearings, and among them I set Mount Deception at N. 25 degrees W., I then examined several of the gorges between the front hills, where the banks were broken away, and to my great dismay found in all of them salt mixed with the sand, the clay, and even the rocks; whilst in the bed of the watercourse, the salt water tea-tree was making its appearance, a shrub I had never before seen under Flinders range, and one which never grows where the soil is not of a very saline nature, and generally only where the water is too brackish for use.