We had on our journey to the westward found an abundance of grass on the sand ridges as well as the flats; but in this desert there was not a blade to be seen.

The ridges were covered with spinifex, through which we found it difficult to force a way, and the flats with salsolaceous productions alone.

There were no pine trees, but the brush consisted of several kinds of acacia, casuarina, cassia, and hakeae, and these were more bushes than shrubs, for they seldom exceeded our own height, and had leaves only at the termination of their upper branches, all the under leaves having dropped off, withered by the intensity of the reflected surface heat.

At one we stopped to rest the horses, but mounted again at half-past one, and reached the hills at 5 p.m.The same dreary desert extended to their base, only that as we approached the hills the flats were broader, and the fall of waters apparently to the east.

The surface of the flats was furrowed by water, and there were large bare patches of red soil, but with the exception of a flossy grass that grew sparingly on some of them, nothing but rhagodia and atriplex flourished.
I had tried the temperature of boiling water at the spot where we stopped in the Rocky Glen, and found it to be 211 degrees and a small fraction; and as we descended a little after leaving the creek, we could not have been much above the sea level at one period of the day, although now more than 450 miles from the coast.