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.  We could see the lake stretching away east or east-south-east as far as the glasses could carry the vision.  Here we made another attempt to cross, but the horses were all floundering about in the bottomless bed of this infernal lake before we could look round.  I made sure they would be swallowed up before our eyes.  We were powerless to help them, for we could not get near owing to the bog, and we sank up over our knees, where the crust was broken, in hot salt mud.  All I could do was to crack my whip to prevent the horses from ceasing to exert themselves, and although it was but a few moments that they were in this danger, to me it seemed an eternity.  They staggered at last out of the quagmire, heads, backs, saddles, everything covered with blue mud, their mouths were filled with salt mud also, and they were completely exhausted when they reached firm ground.  We let them rest in the shade of some quandong trees, which grew in great numbers round about here.  From Mount Udor to the shores of this lake the country had been continually falling.  The northern base of each ridge, as we travelled, seemed higher by many feet than the southern, and I had hoped to come upon something better than this.  I thought such a continued fall of country might lead to a considerable watercourse or freshwater basin; but this salt bog was dreadful, the more especially as it prevented me reaching the mountain which appeared so inviting beyond.

Not seeing any possibility of pushing south, and thinking after all it might not be so far round the lake to the west, I turned to where we had struck the first salt channel, and resolved to try what a more westerly line would produce.  The channel in question was now some fifteen miles away to the north-westward, and by the time we got back there the day was done and “the darkness had fallen from the wings of night.”  We had travelled nearly fifty miles, the horses were almost dead; the thermometer stood