The creek enters the first lake in a broad estuary; this lake is some four miles long by two miles wide, lying North and South.  At the southern end a narrow channel, 150 yards wide, winds its way into the large lake beyond, a fine sheet of water, eight miles in diameter.  A narrow belt of open country, overgrown with succulent herbage, fringes the margin of the lake; beyond it is dense scrub, with occasional patches of grass; beyond that, sand, sandhills, and spinifex.  In the distance can be seen flat-topped hills and bluffs, and rising ground which encloses the hollow of the lake.  The lake has no outlet; of this Gregory satisfied himself by making a complete circuit of it.  At the time of his discovery the lakes were dry, or nearly so, and doubtless had the appearance of being shallow depressions, such as the salt lakes in the southern part of the Colony; so that having followed the Sturt for so many miles—­a creek which showed every appearance of occasionally flooding to a width of five or six miles—­he must have been somewhat uncertain as to what happened to so great a volume of water.  However, the lake is nearly thirty feet deep in the middle, and, from its area, is capable of holding a vast amount of water.  The creek, below its confluence with the Wolf, is continually losing its waters, throwing off arms and billabongs, especially to the west, which form swamps, clay-pans, and lagoons.  So much water is wasted in this manner that near the entrance into the lake the creek is of a most insignificant size.  The fall, too, is so gradual that the water runs sluggishly and has time to soak away into the enclosing sand.

Mr. Stretch tells me that it takes eight days for the water from rain falling at the head of the Sturt to pass his homestead, which gives it a rate of one mile per hour.  Heavy rains had fallen at its source about a month before our arrival, and the water was still flowing.  We therefore saw the lakes as full as they are ever likely to be, except in abnormal seasons.  North of the lake are numerous large clay-pans which had not been flooded, and the lakes could evidently hold more water, and had done so in time past, so that it is pretty clear that the lakes are large enough for ordinary flood waters, and, with the outlying clay-pans, can accommodate the waters of an extraordinary flood.

I feel confident, therefore, that no outlet exists, and that beyond doubt the Sturt ends at the Salt Sea, and does not “make” again further South, as some have suggested.  Standing on any of the hills which surround the lake, some distance (ten miles or so) from it, one can look down upon the water, certainly five hundred feet below the level of the hills, which rise no more than eighty feet above the surrounding plain.  It seems most improbable, therefore, that a creek should break its way through country of so much greater altitude without being seen by Colonel Warburton or myself, or that any connection should exist between the Salt Sea and Warburton’s Salt Lakes to the South-East.