In the above report it will be observed, that there are some apparent discrepancies between my account and Captain Frome’s.  First, with respect to the position of the south-east extremity of Lake Torrens.  Captain Frome states that he found that point thirty miles more to the east than I had placed it in my chart.  Now the only sketch of my course under Flinders range, and that a rough one, which I furnished to the Colonial Government, was sent from Port Lincoln, and is the same which was subsequently published with other papers, relative to South Australia, for the House of Commons, in 1843.  This sketch was put together hastily for his Excellency the Governor, that I might not lose the opportunity of forwarding it when I sent from Port Lincoln to Adelaide for supplies early in October, 1840.  It was constructed entirely, after I found myself compelled to return from the northern interior, and could only be attended to, in a hurried and imperfect manner, during the brief intervals I could snatch from other duties, whilst travelling back from the north to Port Lincoln (nearly 400 miles,) during which time my movements were very rapid, and many arrangements, consequent upon dividing my party at Baxter’s range, had to be attended to; added to this were the difficulties and embarrassments of conducting myself one division of the party to Port Lincoln, through 200 miles of a desert country which had never been explored before, and which, from its arid and sterile character, presented impediments of no ordinary kind.

Upon my return to Adelaide in 1841, after the Expedition had terminated, other duties engrossed my time, and it was only after the publication of Captain Frome’s report, that my attention was again called to the subject.  Upon comparing my notes and bearings with the original sketch I had made, I found that in the hurry and confusion of preparing it, whilst travelling, I had laid down all the bearings and courses magnetic, without allowing for the variation; nor can this error, perhaps, be wondered at, considering the circumstances under which the sketch was constructed.

At Mount Hopeless the variation was 4 degrees E., at Mount Arden it was 7 degrees 24 minutes E. Now if this variation be applied proportionably to all the courses and bearings as marked down in the original chart, commencing from Mount Arden, it will be found that Mount Serle will be brought by my map very nearly in longitude to where Captain Frome places it. [Note 30 at end of para.] Our latitudes appear to agree exactly.  The second point upon which some difference appears to exist between Captain Frome’s report and mine is the character of Lake Torrens itself, which Captain Frome thought might more properly be called a desert.  This, it will be observed, is with reference to its south-east extremity—­a point I never visited, and which I only saw once from Mount Serle; a point, too, which from the view I then had of it, distant although it was, even at that time seemed to me to be “apparently dry,” and is marked as such in Arrowsmith’s chart, published from the sketch alluded to.