We passed through some very thick mulga, which, being mostly dead, ripped our pack-bags, clothes, and skin, as we had continually to push the persistent boughs and branches aside to penetrate it.

We reached a hill in twenty miles, and saw at a glance that no favourable signs of obtaining water existed, for it was merely a pile of loose stones or rocks standing up above the scrubs around.
The view was desolate in the extreme; we had now come thirty miles, but we pushed on ten miles for another hill, to the south-east, and after penetrating the usual scrub, we reached its base in the dark, and camped.

In the morning I climbed the hill, but no water could be seen or procured.

This hill was rugged with broken granite boulders, scrubby with mulga and bushes, and covered with triodia to its summit.
To the south a vague and strange horizon was visible; it appeared flat, as though a plain of great extent existed there, but as the mirage played upon it, I could not make anything of it.

My old friend the high mountain loomed large and abrupt at a great distance off, and it bore 8 degrees 30' west from here, too great a distance for us to proceed to it at once, without first getting water for our horses, as it was possible that no water might exist even in the neighbourhood of such a considerable mountain.