The answer to this riddle was “Parakeelia.”  This is a local, presumably native, name in Central Australia for a most wonderful and useful plant.  A specimen brought back by me from this locality was identified at Kew as CALANDRINIA BALONENSIS.  This plant grows close to the ground in little bunches; in place of leaves it has long, fleshy projections, like fingers, of a yellowish-green colour.  From the centre grows a pretty little lilac flower at the end of a single thin stalk.  The fingers are full of watery juice and by no means unpalatable.  We tried them raw, and also fried in butter, when they were quite good eating.  The plant is greedily devoured by stock of all kinds, and in dry tracts in Central Australia has been the means of saving many head of cattle.  As we found it, it was not easily got hold of, for invariably it grew right in the centre of a hummock of spinifex.  At first the camels, not knowing its properties, would not risk pricking themselves, but after we had shown them, by clearing away the spinifex, how nice it was, they did not hesitate to plunge their soft noses into the spiny mass, with what good effect I have already described.  Indeed, this plant is a wonderful provision of nature, and compensates a little for the hideous sterility of the country.  I am not wide of the mark when I say that given “parakeelia” every second night or so a camel would never want to drink at all, though it is not really as serviceable as water—­not having the same lasting effect.  A similar plant, also found in Central Australia, is “Munyeru.”  In the centre of this a little bag of black seeds grows; these seeds are crushed and eaten by the natives.  Munyeru, Breaden tells me, is quite a good vegetable for human consumption.  Why the locality of this well, “Warri Well,” should be specially favoured by the growth of parakeelia I cannot guess.

The well itself was sufficiently remarkable.  Our work took us some twelve feet from the surface, and in the well we had nearly five feet of water and the probability of a deal more, as we had not reached “bottom.”  The question that presented itself to my mind was whether the natives had sunk the well on a likely looking spot and been fortunate in finding a supply, or whether, from tradition, they knew that this well, possibly only a rock-hole covered by surface soil, existed.  The depression in which the well is situated must after rain receive the drainage, not only from the channel we followed, but from the stony rise to the north of it.  After a heavy storm—­and from the way in which this creek has been torn through the sand, scouring a channel down to bedrock, it is clear that occasionally violent storms visit this region—­a large volume of water would collect in this depression.  Some of it would be sucked up by the trees and shrubs, some would evaporate, but the greater part would soak into the ground where, so long as the bed-rock (which in this particular case is a hard sandstone and iron conglomerate) is impervious, it would remain.  I should think it likely, therefore, that on this and similar flats, not far from hills or tablelands, water by sinking could be obtained at no great depth.  A good guide to this well is a bare patch of rock on Mount Colin, which bears 138 degrees three miles distant.