62 
NATIVE FEMALE. 
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° 58' 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° E. from which I took 
several bearings, and among them I set Mount De- 
ception at N. 25° 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. 
The beds of the watercourses were in some places 
quite white and glazed with encrustations of salt, 
where the rains had lodged, and the water had eva- 
porated. Some of the cliffs which I examined pre- 
