What follows is an extract which I have been favoured with from his private journal.

You will not find it in the published history of the expedition:-- "Date--lat .-- long .-- Morning.

It is getting hopeless now, and to-morrow I turn.

Sand, and nothing but sand.

The salsolaceous plants, so long the only vegetation we have seen, are gone; and the little sienite peak, the last symptom of a water-bearing country, has disappeared behind us.