Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/119

 About Lake Hope commences a country of a different and rather remarkable kind. We may call it the lake district. The soil is generally clayey, hard and baked in hot dry weather, but only requiring rain to cover it with grass, which in many parts is most luxuriant. This is particularly the case with hollow parts of the surface, natural indentations apparently, which, with adequate rains, are converted into temporary lakes, and at other times are so many natural meadows luxuriant with long grass. Occasionally the soil is impregnated with saline or bitter particles, which are not tasted when the lakes are fresh filled by the rain, but which after a large evaporation render the diminished waters quite undrinkable. The rate of evaporation in these open plains, under a hot sun, and in the strong winds that often sweep the surface, is almost incredible. The party go on to Lake Buchanan, where a depôt is formed for some time, until some additional provisions are brought up by a detachment sent back for that purpose, and Mr. McKinlay has made his proposed search for Burke's missing expedition. Here he is already in the latitude of Cooper's Creek, and about sixty miles to the westward of it.

They are now in a region that seems full of the aboriginal natives, and in fact full of life of every kind, where water, that great and