I was sure that the region to the west was not likely to prove a Garden of Eden, and I thought it was not improbable that I might have to go 200 miles before I found any water.  If unsuccessful in that way I should have precisely the same distance to come back again; therefore, with the probabilities of such a journey before me, I determined to carry out two casks of water to ninety or a hundred miles, send some of the camels back from that point and push on with the remainder.  I took six excellent camels, three for riding and three for carrying loads—­two carrying thirty gallons of water each, and the third provisions, rugs, gear, etc.  I took Saleh, my only Afghan camel-man—­usually they are called camel-drivers, but that is a misnomer, as all camels except riding ones must be led—­and young Alec Ross; Saleh was to return with the camels from the place at which I should plant the casks, and Alec and I were to go on.  The northern party left on the same day, leaving Peter Nicholls, my cook, and Tommy the black boy, to look after the camels and camp.

(Illustration:  Little salt lake.)

I will first give an outline of my journey to the west.  The country, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the wells, was, as usual in this region, all sandhills and scrub, although at eighteen miles, steering west, I came upon the shores of a large salt depression, or lake-bed, which had numerous sandhill islands scattered about it.  It appeared to extend to a considerable distance southerly.  By digging we easily obtained a quantity of water, but it was all pure brine and utterly useless.  After this we met lake-bed after lake-bed, all in a region of dense scrubs and sandhills for sixty miles, some were small, some large, though none of the size of the first one.  At seventy-eight miles from Ooldabinna, having come as near west as it is possible to steer in such a country on a camel—­of course I had a Gregory’s compass—­we had met no signs of water fit for man or animal to drink, though brine and bog existed in most of the lake-beds.  The scrubs were very thick, and were chiefly mallee, the Eucalyptus dumosa, of course attended by its satellite spinifex.  So dense indeed was the growth of the scrubs, that Alec Ross declared, figuratively speaking, “you could not see your hand before you.”  We could seldom get a view a hundred yards in extent, and we wandered on farther and farther from the only place where we knew that water existed.  At this distance, on the shores of a salt-lake, there was really a very pretty scene, though in such a frightful desert.  A high, red earthy bank fringed with feathery mulga and bushes to the brink, overlooking the milk-white expanse of the lake, and all surrounded by a strip of open ground with the scrubs standing sullenly back.  The open ground looked green, but not with fertility, for it was mostly composed of bushes of the dull green, salty samphire.  It was the weird, hideous, and demoniacal