206 Captain Sturt's Expedition into the 
distant interior. From this station wc descended to l'’ 101 !* 
about six miles distant, passing through a gap m the lulls that 
here were separated from the main group. These detached lulls 
had perfectly flat tops, of soil and productions sumlar to those 
on the plains below. They were fast crumblmg away under the 
hands of Time, and the scene at their base resembled the ru.ns 
of a fair city, whose stone edifices had been shattered to p.eces 
by an earthquake. All the fragments of rock (a hard close sand¬ 
stone) had been split into parallelograms of rock, were lying at 
the base of each hill like the rubbish at the bottom of a breach. 
These hills, as I have observed, differed from the ranges we had 
passed in all respects ; and in their appearance form a remarkable 
contrast with them. From our second station we observed the 
faint course of a creek, leading towards the two peaks we 
had noticed from our first station; and on tracing it down we 
arrived at a tolerably sized pool of water, at which we halted for 
the night, the peak being still some miles distant from us. On 
the following morning we crossed stony plains, and leaving the 
creek, which appeared to have spread over, there turned a little 
to the westward, soon afterwards ascended one of the peaks. 
The appearance of the hills at this, their northern termination, 
was similar to their southern end—the same mouldering and 
projecting points, and the same broken detached and flat-topped 
islands. From our position, this formation seemed to extend to 
the eastward, the hills gradually declining in altitude until they 
fell to the level of the plains. To the W.N. W. a boundless dark 
scrub extended, but to the N.N.W. there was a swell above the 
horizon line, made by some low undulating hills. There was the 
smoke of a solitary fire to the S.W., but the desert appeared to 
be otherwise uninhabited. Without a ray of hope to cheer us 
on, we descended r, narrow valley between the peaks and the 
main hills, and encamped without water on the side of a grassy 
creek, just where the valley opened out into the plains. On the 
following morning, as soon as wc cleared the hills, we turned 
to the eastward, in the hope of striking some creek falling to 
the north, and at noon reached a small channel in which there 
were two, what might truly be called, puddles of water; they 
