The Second Day, I Crossed The High Range I Had Observed From The Black Rock Hills And Mount Bryan, For

The southern termination of which Colonel Gawler steered when he left the northern bend of the Murray in December, 1839;

But though these hills had an elevation of twelve hundred or fourteen hundred feet above the plain, there was no indication of rain having fallen there since the deluge. This want of water prevented my proceeding further to the north-east; but from the summit of the highest of these hills (Mount Porcupine,) I had a clear view of the horizon in every direction, and a more barren, sterile country, cannot be imagined.

"The direction of the dividing ridge between the basin of the Murray and the interior desert plain was generally about north-east from the Black Rock Hills (the highest point north of Mount Bryan,) gradually decreasing in elevation, and, if possible, increasing in barrenness. The summits of those hills I found invariably rock - generally sandstone - the lower slopes covered with dense brush, and the valleys with low scrub, with occasional small patches of thin wiry grass. I was obliged to return on the third day, and reached the foot of Mount Bryan on the fourth evening, at the southern extremity of which hill the horses were nearly bogged in the soft ground, though only fifty miles distant from land where the dust was flying as if in the midst of summer.

"It appears to me certain, from the result of these different attempts, that there is no country eastward of the high land extending north from Mount Bryan, as far as Mount Hopeless, a distance of about three hundred miles, as far as the meridian of 141 degrees (and probably much beyond it), available for either agricultural or pastoral purposes; and that, though there may be occasional spots of good land at the base of the main range on the sources of the numerous creeks flowing from thence towards the inland desert, these must be too limited in extent to be of any present value.

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