So Much Water Is Wasted
In This Manner That Near The Entrance Into The Lake The Creek Is Of A
Most Insignificant Size.
The fall, too, is so gradual that the water runs
sluggishly and has time to soak away into the enclosing sand.
Mr. Stretch tells me that it takes eight days for the water from rain
falling at the head of the Sturt to pass his homestead, which gives it a
rate of one mile per hour. Heavy rains had fallen at its source about a
month before our arrival, and the water was still flowing. We therefore
saw the lakes as full as they are ever likely to be, except in abnormal
seasons. North of the lake are numerous large clay-pans which had not
been flooded, and the lakes could evidently hold more water, and had done
so in time past, so that it is pretty clear that the lakes are large
enough for ordinary flood waters, and, with the outlying clay-pans, can
accommodate the waters of an extraordinary flood.
I feel confident, therefore, that no outlet exists, and that beyond doubt
the Sturt ends at the Salt Sea, and does not "make" again further
South, as some have suggested. Standing on any of the hills which
surround the lake, some distance (ten miles or so) from it, one can look
down upon the water, certainly five hundred feet below the level of the
hills, which rise no more than eighty feet above the surrounding plain.
It seems most improbable, therefore, that a creek should break its way
through country of so much greater altitude without being seen by Colonel
Warburton or myself, or that any connection should exist between the Salt
Sea and Warburton's Salt Lakes to the South-East.
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