Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/331

 rare and pleasant spectacle of Australian scenery; The country passed through may be described as consisting of valleys and great plains bounded by hill ranges. "On some of these vast plains," remarks McKinlay, "the traveller, if overtaken by such heavy rains as his party experienced, would be certainly washed helplessly away, for there is not a knoll six feet in height within range of the eye." Notwithstanding this luxuriance of the hour throughout this country caused by the fitful rains, the prevailing spinifex grass guides us to the poverty generally of the country. It is a country similar to that described in much less glowing language by Waterhouse while passing in the same latitudes at some distance further to the westward. The spinifex is the only permanent vegetation of the smaller kind that can face the sun and climate upon the open country; a month or two of the winds and droughts of summer and autumn sweep off everything else, and the country returns to its customary bareness and aridity, as if awaking from a casual dream.

Bright and pleasant, however, are these its dreaming intervals; as the party traverse the grass and inhale the fresh perfume of the flowers, the whole scene teems with life, animal as well as vegetable. The Emu Plains are so named from a troop of these remarkable wingless birds, the ostriches of Australia, having been seen there, and