132 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
neither grass or water, or wood; and that it is awfully hot. This 
last feature appears to terrify them. They say that they are 
obliged to take wood to the hills for fire, and that they clamber 
up the rocks on the hills ; that when there is water there, it is in 
deep holes from which they are obliged to sponge it up and 
squeeze it out to drink. I do not in truth think that any of the 
natives have been beyond the hills, and that the country is per- 
fectly impracticable. 
“We are now not more than two hundred and fifteen feet above 
the sea, with a declining country to the north-west, and the gene- 
ral dip of the continent to the south-west. What is the natural 
inference where there is not a single river emptying itself upon the 
coast, but that there is an internal basin ? Such a country can 
only be penetrated by cool calculation and determined perse- 
verance. I have sat down before it as a besieger before a fortress, 
to make my approaches with the same systematic regularity. I 
must cut hay and send forage and water in advance, as far as I 
can. I have the means of taking sixteen days’ water and feed 
for two horses and three men ; and if I can throw my supplies 
one hundred miles in advance, I shall be able to go two hundred 
miles more beyond that point, at the rate of thirty miles a-day, 
one of us walking whilst two rode. Surely at such a distance 
some new feature will open to reward our efforts! My own 
opinion is, that an inland sea will bring us up ere long — then 
how shall we get the boat upon it ? ‘ Why,’ you will say, ‘ neces- 
sity is the mother of invention.’ You will find some means or 
other, no doubt ; and so we will. However, under any circum- 
stances, depend upon it I will either lift up or tear down the cur- 
tain which hides the interior from us, so look out for the next 
accounts from me as of the most interesting kind, as solving this 
great problem, or shutting the door to discovery from this side 
the continent for ever. 
“ P.S. Poole has just returned from the ranges. I have 
not time to write over again. He says that there are high 
ranges to N. and N.W. and water, — a sea extending along the 
horizon from S.W. by W., to ten E. of N. in which there 
