From the journal of this traveller I take the following description of the country round the lake:  “We found good feed for the camels here, but the sandhills appear to be increasing in number and size.  We have got amongst the half-dried salt lagoons, so our further progress North-West is cut off. . . we are quite amongst the salt-lakes, a large one lies to the West of us, sending out its arms to every point.  We must round the eastern end of them, as camels and salt-bogs don’t agree at all. . .  We tried to cross but had to turn back. . .  Country very bad, dense spinifex, high, steep sand-ridges with timber in flats.  Any man attempting to cross this country with horses must perish. . .  A strong easterly wind prevailed, blowing up clouds of sand and ashes from the burnt ground.  Truly this is a desert!”

This was written when I was two and a half years old.  The writer little thought that an infant was growing up who would have no more sense than to revisit this ghastly region; nor as far as I remember was the infant thinking much about sand!  Dear me! how easy it was to get a drink in those days—­merely by yelling for it—­but the strongest lungs in the world cannot dig out a native well.

CHAPTER V

STANSMORE RANGE TO LAKE MACDONALD

Shaping our course from the lake (Lake White) towards the highest point in the range, which I named Stansmore Range after poor Charlie, we had the novel and pleasant experience of travelling with, instead of across, the ridges—­if only we could have turned the country round at right angles, or changed the North point of the compass, how nice it would have been!  As it was, South we must go to get home, and take the ridges as they came; our Westerly course was only temporary.  For twenty-seven miles we steered W.b.S., keeping along the trough of two ridges the whole time, seeing nothing on either hand but a high bank of sand covered with the usual vegetation.  The trough was flat at the bottom, and about 150 yards wide.  For ten miles we travelled between the same two parallel ridges, then in front the butt-end of another appeared, as the trough widened out.  Deviating slightly to the South from our former course, we were again between two ridges, one of which was the same that we had followed along before.  Then, again, in a few miles another ridge would start, and altering our course again, this time a little to the North, continued our march between two fresh ridges, and so on.  Thus it will be seen that the ridges, though apparently parallel, are not accurately so, and that one may be continuous for more than ten miles or so, when it ends and another takes its place.