As we
overlooked it from the higher ground it was dark, with a snow-white patch
of sand in the centre; on traversing it we found that its productions
were almost entirely samphire-bushes growing on a salty soil.
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.
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