Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/249

 tract of country lay to the north, quite close to the lake and its neighbourhood where they had been encamped. We have already alluded more than once to "the Desert." We now know that there is no great central desert, properly speaking. The interior is interspersed with patches of poor soil and of sterile sand and stones, alternating with better country. In the region the party were about to enter, these sterile patches were the prevailing feature, and there seems to be a considerable belt of continuous stony desert sufficiently noticeable to maintain against this particular part, and a good deal of the neighbourhood tinged with its inhospitalities, the title of the Stony Desert. The name has descended from Sturt, but the area of "the enemy" and his terrible associations, have been very much cut down.

But, however circumscribed, the desert must not be despised. McKinlay, while waiting the much desired rain that the passing clouds often promised and as often refused, takes an excursion into this desert. Its hard features, he finds, have not been at all overstated. Stony plains in one direction, bare sand hills in another, water nowhere. Even the hardy and courageous spinifex has disappeared, or is very sparsely limited to the shady side of an occasional sand hill. And yet, with true Australian diversity, "a heavy timbered creek" is seen at some miles distance to come