CHAPTER X. 
COUNTRY BETWEEN STREAKY BAY AND BAXTER’S RANGE 
ITS SCRUBBY CHARACTER- GAWLER RANGE — MOUNT 
STURT ASCEND A PEAK SALT LAKES BEAUTIFUL 
FLOWER ASCEND ANOTHER HILL — MOUNT BROWN SEEN 
— EXTENSIVE VIEW TO THE NORTH — LAKE GILLES — 
Baxter’s range. 
During the time that I had been occupied in 
conducting my division of the party from Baxter’s 
Range to Port Lincoln, the overseer had been 
engaged in guiding the other portion across to 
Streaky Bay, upon my former track from thence to 
Mount Arden, in September 1839. The following 
brief extracts from my Journal of that period, whilst 
crossing from Streaky Bay to Mount Arden, will 
convey an idea of the character of the country 
extending between these two points ; and of the 
great difficulty, indeed almost the impossibility of 
forcing a passage, except immediately after the 
occurrence of heavy rains. 
1839, Sept. 18. — We left the depot near Streaky 
Bay, at a course nearly due east, and passing through 
alternations of brush and of open grassy plains, upon 
the skirts of which grew a few casuarinse ; halted 
after a stage of eighteen miles, at an opening in the 
brush, where we had good grass, but no water ; we 
