The Shores Of This Lake I Visited To The Westward Of Flinders Range, At Three Different Points, From Eighty To

Ninety miles apart from each other, and on all these occasions I found the basin to consist, as far as

I could penetrate, of a mass of mud and sand, coated on the surface with a crust of salt, but having water mixed with it beneath. At the most north-westerly point attained by me, water was found in an arm of the main lake, about two feet deep, clear, and salt as the sea; it did not extend, however, more than two or three hundred yards, nor did it continue to the bed of the main lake, which appeared, from a rise that I ascended near the arm, to be of the same character and consistency as before. The whole course of the lake, to the farthest point visited by me, was bounded by a steep, continuous, sandy ridge, exactly like a sea-shore ridge; those parts of its course to the north, and to the east of Flinders range, which I did not go down to, were seen and laid down from various heights in that mountain chain. Altogether, the outline of this extraordinary feature, as thus observed and traced, could not have extended over a circuit of less than 400 miles.

It is singular enough that all the springs found near the termination of Flinders range should have been salt, and that these were very nearly in the same latitude in which Captain Sturt had found brine springs in the bed of the Darling in 1829, although our two positions were so far separated in longitude.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 541 of 914
Words from 150374 to 150652 of 254601