Failing, therefore, to
find the promised land of Wingillpin, although he had passed over much
good and well-watered country, and had also found Chambers' Creek, he
turned south-west, and made some explorations in the neighbourhood and to
the west of Lake Gairdner. Thence he steered for Fowler's Bay, and his'
description of some of the country on his course is anything but
inviting. From a spur of the high peak that he named Mount Fincke he
saw--
"A prospect gloomy in the extreme; I could see a long distance but
nothing met the eye save a dense scrub, as black and dismal as night."
From here they got fairly into a sandy, spinifex desert, which Stuart
says was worse than Sturt's, for there, there was a little salt-bush;
"here there was nothing but spinifex to be found and the horses were
foodless."
Things were getting desperate with the little band, their provisions were
finished, but still the leader would not desist from looking for good
country; but at last he had to make back as fast as he could. Dense
scrub, and the same "dreary, dreadful, dismal desert," as he calls it,
accompanied them day after day.
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