WANT OF RAIN. 
91 
granite; and even the higher levels, which had 
heretofore been of a sandy nature, were now rugged 
and stony, and more sterile than before ; the grass- 
trees, which generally accommodate themselves to 
any soil, were stunted and diminutive, and by no 
means so abundant as before. The general eleva- 
tion of the country still appeared to be the same. 
I estimated it at about three hundred feet. 
One circumstance, which struck me as rather 
singular, with regard to the last forty miles of 
country we had traversed, was, that it did not appear 
to have experienced the same weather as there had 
been to the eastward. The little water we found 
deposited in the rocks, plainly indicated that the late 
rains had either not fallen here at all, or in a much less 
degree than they had, in the direction we had come 
from ; whilst the dry and withered state of any little 
grass that we found, convinced me that the earlier 
rains had still been more partial, so great was the 
contrast between the rich luxuriance of the long 
green grass we had met with before, and the few 
dry withered bunches of last year’s growth, which 
we fell in with now. 
