May 9th We Left The Well On A Southerly Course, And Were Soon Amongst The
Ridges, Which Continued For The Next Two Days.
The night of the 11th,
having skirted a line of rough cliffs, we camped about three miles North
of a very prominent single hill, which I named Mount Webb, after W. F.
Webb, Esq., of Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire.
As the sun rose that
morning the mirage of a lake of apparently great size was visible for
90 degrees of the horizon - that is, from East round to South. Neither from
the cliffs that we skirted, nor from Mount Webb, was any lake visible, but
it is more than probable that a large salt lake exists in this locality,
possibly connecting, in a broken line, Lake White and Lake Macdonald. A
mirage sometimes appears in exactly the opposite direction from that in
which the lake lies, but I noticed when standing on the Stansmore Range
that as the sun rose Lake White was clearly visible, whilst when the sun
had risen a few degrees above the horizon the lake disappeared. I am of
opinion, therefore, that large lakes will some day be found to lie to the
North-East of Mount Webb. Had we not been so pressed for time I should
have made a flying trip in this direction. Mount Webb is flat-topped,
isolated, rocky-sided, innocent of all vegetation, of sandstone capped
with quartzite, standing out with imposing clearness some five hundred
feet above a plain of spinifex and mulga scrubs.
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