Continuing On Our Course Over Treeless Sandhills For A Mile Or Two, We Found We Had Not Escaped This Feature

Quite so easily, for it was now right in our road; it appeared, however, to be bounded by sandhills a

Little more to the left, eastwards; so we went in that direction, but at each succeeding mile we saw more and more of this objectionable feature; it continually pushed us farther and farther to the east, until, having travelled about fifteen miles, and had it constantly on our right, it swept round under some more sandhills which hid it from us, till it lay east and west right athwart our path. It was most perplexing to me to be thus confronted by such an obstacle. We walked a distance on its surface, and to our weight it seemed firm enough, but the instant we tried our horses they almost disappeared. The surface was dry and encrusted with salt, but brine spurted out at every step the horses took. We dug a well under a sandhill, but only obtained brine.

This obstruction was apparently six or seven miles across, but whether what we took for its opposite shores were islands or the main, I could not determine. We saw several sandhill islands, some very high and deeply red, to which the mirage gave the effect of their floating in an ocean of water. Farther along the shore eastwards were several high red sandhills; to these we went and dug another well and got more brine.

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