As we passed along the creek, the slight flood became slighter still; it had now nearly ceased running.  The day was one of the warmest we had yet experienced.  The creek now seemed not to come from the range, but, thinking water might be got there so soon after rains, we travelled up to its foot.  The country was sandy, and bedecked with triodia, but near the range I saw for the first time on this expedition a quantity of the Australian grass-tree (Xanthorrhoea) dotting the landscape.  They were of all heights, from two to twenty feet.  The country round the base of this range is not devoid of a certain kind of wild beauty.  A few blood-wood or red gum-trees, with their brilliant green foliage, enlivened the scene.

A small creek, lined with gum-trees, issued from an opening or glen, up which I rode in search of water, but was perfectly unsuccessful, as not a drop of the life-sustaining fluid was to be found.  Upon returning to impart this discouraging intelligence to my companions, I stumbled upon a small quantity in a depression, on a broad, almost square boulder of rock that lay in the bed of the creek.  There was not more than two quarts.  As the horses had watered in the afternoon, and as there was a quantity of a herb, much like a green vetch or small pea, we encamped.  I ascended a small eminence to the north, and with the glasses could distinguish the creek last left, now running east and west.  I saw water gleaming in its channel, and at the junction of the little creek we were now on; there was also water nearly east.  As the horses were feeding down the creek that way, I felt sure they would go there and drink in the night.  It is, however, very strange whenever one wants horses to do a certain thing or feed a certain way, they are almost sure to do just the opposite, and so it was in the present case.  On returning to camp by a circuitous route, I found in a small rocky crevice an additional supply of water, sufficient for our own requirements—­there was nearly a bucketful—­and felicity reigned in the camp.  A few cypress pines are rooted in the rocky shelving sides of the range, which is not of such elevation as it appeared from a distance.  The highest points are not more than from 700 to 800 feet.  I collected some specimens of plants, which, however, are not peculiar to this range.  I named it Gosse’s range, after Mr. Harry Gosse.  The late rains had not visited this isolated mass.  It is barren and covered with spinifex from turret to basement, wherever sufficient soil can be found among the stones to admit of its growth.

The night of the 9th of September, like the preceding, was cold and dewy.  The horses wandered quite in the wrong direction, and it was eleven o’clock before we got away from the camp and went north to the sheet of water seen yesterday, where we watered the horses and followed up the creek, as its course here appeared to be from the west.  The country was level, open, and sandy, but covered with the widely