Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/64

 apparently, but of vast expanse, being twenty miles wide, and extending, in a horse-shoe or serpentine form, 400 miles into the interior. He named this watery expanse Lake Torrens, and Lake Torrens has ever since figured upon our maps with a vague and mysterious outline that has been gradually softening into those uncertain marks that may represent the traditionary and mythic. The sea in question was the sudden effect of heavy rains, such in fact as McKinlay's party encountered further on in the journey, and disappearing perhaps as suddenly as it came. On the present occasion there was nothing but a dry desert. "Got all safe across the Lake Torrens," says the explorer on 27th September, "no water being at our crossing nor in view." Indeed, the next fifty miles was the most veritable desert that was experienced on the journey.

Lake Hope succeeded, and the expedition entered a country remarkable for many such sheets of water, and for a soil clothed with luxuriant grass whenever the supplies of rain gave support to vegetable life, but at other times parched and waste with the excessive heat of summer. Here, at Lake Buchanan, the expedition halted for some time, until its leader had explored this lake district, and in particular had followed up the traces afforded to him by the reports of natives of the missing party under Burke. In the midst of his