128 
CHEERLESS PROSPECT. 
The lake was now visible to the north and to the 
east ; and I had at last ascertained, beyond all doubt, 
that its basin, commencing near the head of Spencer’s 
Gulf, and following the coarse of Flinders range 
(bending round its northern extreme to the south- 
ward), constituted those hills the termination of the 
island of South Australia, for such 1 imagine it once 
to have been. This closed all my dreams as to the 
expedition, and put an end to an undertaking from 
which so much was anticipated. I had now a view 
before me that would have damped the ardour of 
the most enthusiastic, or dissipated the doubts of the 
most sceptical. To the showers that fell on the 
evening of the 31st of August, we were solely in- 
debted for having been able to travel thus far ; had 
there been much more rain the country would have 
been impracticable for horses, — if less we could not 
have procured water to have enabled us to make 
such a push as we had done. 
The lake where it was visible, appeared, as it had 
ever done, to be from twenty -five to thirty miles 
across, and its distance from Mount Hopeless was 
nearly the same. The hills to the S. and S. W. of 
us, seemed to terminate on the eastern slopes, as 
abruptly as on the western ; and from the point 
where we stood, we could distinctly trace by the 
gum-trees, the direction of watercourses emanating 
from among them, taking northerly, north-easterly, 
easterly and south-easterly courses, according to the 
point of the range they came from. This had been 
the case during the whole of our route under Flin- 
