CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
121 
the past two months, to find sufficient water in the ravines to 
enable me to push on for several days. The second day, I crossed 
the high range I had observed from the Black Rock Hills and 
Mount Bryan, for the southern termination of which Colonel 
Gawler steered when he left the northern bend of the Murray in 
December, 1839 ; but though these hills had an elevation of 
twelve hundred or fourteen hundred feet above the plain, there 
was no indication of rain having fallen there since the deluge. 
This want of water prevented my proceeding further to the north- 
east ; but from the summit of the highest of these hills (Mount 
Porcupine,) I had a clear view of the horizon in every direction, 
and a more barren, sterile country, cannot be imagined. 
“ The direction of the dividing ridge between the basin of the 
Murray and the interior desert plain was generally about north- 
east from the Black Rock Hills (the highest point north of 
Mount Bryan,) gradually decreasing in elevation, and, if possible, 
increasing in barrenness. The summits of those hills I found 
invariably rock — generally sandstone — the lower slopes covered 
with dense brush, and the valleys with low scrub, with occasional 
small patches of thin wiry grass. I was obliged to return on the 
third day, and reached the foot of Mount Bryan on the fourth 
evening, at the southern extremity of which hill the horses were 
nearly bogged in the soft ground, though only fifty miles distant 
from land where the dust was flying as if in the midst of summer. 
“ It appears to me certain, from the result of these different 
attempts, that there is no country eastward of the high land ex- 
tending north from Mount Bryan, as far as Mount Hopeless, a 
distance of about three hundred miles, as far as the meridian of 
141° (and probably much beyond it), available for either agricul- 
tural or pastoral purposes ; and that, though there may be occa- 
sional spots of good land at the base of the main range on the 
sources of the numerous creeks flowing from thence towards the 
inland desert, these must be too limited in extent to be of any 
present value. 
“ The nature of the formation of the main range I found gene- 
rally iron-stone, conglomerate and quartz, with sandstone and 
