CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
117 
“The most northern point at which I found water last year, 
was near the top of a deep ravine of the Black Rock Hills, in 
lat. 32° 45' 25", where I left the dray and the larger portion of 
my party on the 20th July, taking on only a light spring cart, 
the bottom filled entirely with kegs containing sufficient water 
for our horses for nearly three days, and provisions for one 
month, which was as much as the cart would contain. 
“ My object being to ascertain the boundaries of the southern 
termination of the eastern branch of Lake Torrens, as laid down 
by Mr. Eyre, and also the nature of the country between Flin- 
ders range, as high as the parallel of Mount Hopeless, and the 
meridian of 141°, (the eastern limits of the province), 1 kept at 
first a course as near N.N.E. as the nature of the ground would 
admit, to ensure my not passing to the east of this extremity of 
the lake ; from whence I intended, if possible, to pursue a line 
nearly north-east, as far as my time and the means at my disposal 
would allow me, hoping to reach the high land laid down by Sir 
Thomas Mitchell, on the right banks of the Darling, to the north 
of Mount Lyell, and thus ascertain if any reasonable hope 
existed of penetrating at some future time towards the interior 
from thence. The continued heavy rains which had fallen for 
more than three weeks before my departure from Adelaide, on 
the 8th July, and for nearly a fortnight afterwards, had left the 
surface water in pools on the scrubby plains, and in some of the 
ravines ; but on proceeding north, it was evident that these rains 
had not been there so general or so heavy, though by steering 
from point to point of the hills, after crossing the Black Rock 
Range at Rowe’s Creek, I was able to find sufficient water for 
the horses, and to replenish the kegs every second or third day. 
From this spot, the plains, as well as the higher land, appeared 
evidently to dip away to the north-east, the barren hills all 
diminishing in elevation, and the deep watercourses from Flin- 
ders range all crossing the plains in that direction. In one of 
these watercourses, the Siccus (lat. about 31° 55'), whose sec- 
tion nearly equals that of the Murray, there were indications of 
not very remote floods having risen to between twenty and thirty 
