340 Captain Sturt’s Expedition into the 
which it had evaporated it would have been dry. As it was, it 
gave us sufficient to allay our thirst, and we left it earnestly 
hoping that we might find water in one or both of the pools we 
had yet to pass between us and the creek, a distance of ninety- 
two miles. Indeed, unless we did, I did not know how we should 
get our horses safe to it. We started on this anxious journey at 
early dawn on the morning of the 27th. Our horses were worn 
out with fatigue, and absolutely weary, reeling under us as if 
about to fall. Cutting off an angle in our former route we crossed 
a larger portion of the grassy plains I have mentioned as being at 
the termination of the large creek. That these extensive levels, 
covered with a kind of grass, which the cattle do not seetn to 
relish, but which affording an abundance of seed are as wheat- 
fields to the natives, receive the superfluous waters of that creek 
I have not the slightest doubt. It must, indeed, either have fallen 
into the Stony Desert or fallen short of it; and as on the course 
on which I ran from the lake, I must have intersected it had it 
continued, I cannot but conclude that its termination is such as I 
have stated it to be. It is the peculiar character of the rivers 
and creeks of the interior to exhaust themselves in marshes, or 
by overflowing some great level. A little before noon we saw the 
lake far to our left, and at 5 p.m. gained our second or centre 
well, but it was perfectly dry. As the sun set we again mounted 
our horses and rode slowly on without a hope of finding water in 
the only remaining well, thirty-six miles from the creek. The 
moon was in the wane, and we had not her light. Time would not 
admit of our resting ; we, therefore, lit a small lamp, and by its 
feeble light retraced our steps, in the dead of the night, over the 
dunes and flats, one of us walking in front with the lamp in his 
hand. At 3 a.m. we neared the well, and morning was just be¬ 
ginning to break when we recognised the ground on which we 
had slept, and rode up to it; we saw there was a glittering light 
in the well as we approached it, which in the dusk we could not 
distinctly make out; but Stuart, who was the first to examine 
the well, called out “ Water, water.” This welcome information 
enabled me to pull up, and we rested until 8 o’clock. We ob¬ 
tained four buckets of water from this well, which, without doubt, 
