128 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
Bay). During the whole of this vast distance, not a 
watercourse, not a hollow of any kind was crossed ; 
the only water to be obtained was by digging close 
to the sea-shore, or the sand-hills of the coast, and 
even by that means it frequently could not be pro- 
cured for distances of 150 to 160 miles together. 
With the exception of the Gawler Range, which 
lies between Streaky Bay and Mount Arden, this 
dreary waste was one almost uniform table-land 
of fossil formation, with an elevation of from three 
to live hundred feet, covered for the most part by 
dense impenetrable scrubs, and varied only on its sur- 
face by occasional sandy or rocky undulations. 
What then can be the nature of that mvsterious 
«/ 
interior, bounded as it is by a table-land without 
river or lakes, without watercourses or drainage of 
any kind, for so vast a distance ? Can it be that 
the whole is one immense interminable desert, or an 
alternation of deserts and shallow salt lakes like 
Lake Torrens ? Conjecture is set at defiance by the 
impenetrable arrangements of nature; where, the 
more we pry into her secrets, the more bewildered 
and uncertain become all our speculations. 
It has been a common and a popular theory to 
imagine the existence of an inland sea, and this 
theory has been strengthened and confirmed by the 
opinion of so talented, so experienced, and so enter- 
prising a traveller as my friend Captain Sturt, in its 
favour. That gentleman, with the noble and disin- 
terested enthusiasm by which he has ever been 
