The white patch we had seen from a distance was the dry bed of a shallow salt lagoon also fringed round with samphire bushes, and being in our course we crossed it.  There was a fine coating of salt on its surface, together with gypsum and clay, as at Lake Torrens.  The country for several miles round it was barren beyond description, and small nodules of limestone were scattered over the ground in many places.  After leaving the lagoon, which though moist had been sufficiently hard to bear our weight, we passed amidst tortuous and stunted box-trees for about three miles; then crossed the small dry and bare bed of a water-course, that was shaded by trees of better appearance, and almost immediately afterwards found ourselves on the outskirts of extensive and beautifully grassed plains, similar to that on which I had fixed the Depot, and most probably owing, like them, their formation to the overflow of the last, or some other creek we had traced.  The character of the country we had previously travelled over being so very bad, the change to the park-like scene now before us was very remarkable.  Like the plains at the Depot, they had gum-trees all round them, and a line of the same trees running through their centre.

Entering upon them on a north-west course, we proceeded over the open ground, and saw three dark figures in the distance, who proved to be women gathering seeds.  They did not perceive us until we were so near to them that they could not escape, but stood for some time transfixed with amazement.  On riding up we dismounted, and asked them by signs where there was any water, to which question they signified most energetically that there was none in the direction we were going, that it was to the west.  One of these women had a jet black skin, and long curling glossy ringlets.  She seemed indeed almost of a different race, and was, without doubt, a secondary object of consideration with her companions; who, to secure themselves I fancy, intimated to us that we might take her away; this, however, we declined doing.  One of the women went on with her occupation of cleaning the grass seeds she had collected, all the time we remained, humming a melancholy dirge.  On leaving them, and turning to the point where they said no water was to be found, they exhibited great alarm, and followed us at a distance.  Soon after we passed close to some gum-trees and found a small dry channel under a sand hill on the other side, running this down we came suddenly on two bough huts, before which two or three little urchins were playing, who, the moment they saw us, popped into the huts like rabbits.  Directly opposite there was a shallow puddle rather than a pool of water, and as Joseph had just met with an accident I was obliged to stop at it.  I was really sorry to do so, however, for I knew our horses would exhaust it all during the night, and I was reluctant to rob these poor creatures of so valuable a store, I therefore sent Flood to try if he could find any lower down; but, as he failed, we unsaddled our horses and sat down.