Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/281

 two days' progress beyond this gay, luxuriant scene, "our journey to-day (21st March) was over nothing but red sand hills."

How, then, are we to know when we are in and when we are out of the Desert? Is it when we quit the fragrant region of flowers, and emerge into more ordinary scenery, that we know we have left the region of sand and stones? But the Desert has still its recognizable features throughout. The red sand hills protrude everywhere, varied by stony plains. Hill ranges appear on the horizon, but they are soilless and treeless masses of rock. Timber, if there is any, is confined to the beds of creeks, and there too, in protected spots, may be permanent, or comparatively permanent, grass; but the surface generally is bare under the scorching of sun and drought, excepting on those fitful occasions when the rain, as with a magician's wand, covers the country with beauty—a beauty, however, that may disappear almost as promptly as it came. These are the features of our Australian desert, and let us watch when they cease. On 23rd March there are some ameliorative symptoms. A white gum-tree flat is passed over; the trees are not very large, but the stony character is less conspicuous. The next day the wooded hills of Scott's Range appear in the distance. This last symptom coming upon the others preceding, we take to be decisive, so we close the Desert, and the chapter that describes it,