Page:Tracks of McKinlay and party across Australia.djvu/71

 mere imagination? By no means; for the "hot wind" that is still, with more or less of fiery-breath, wafted down every summer to the south and south-eastern coasts proclaims that the arid region still exists, and still can make its existence known at many hundreds of miles distance.

The Desert is there still, but we have now gained a somewhat different view of its character. Lying to the south of the latitude of the centre is a wide sub-tropical region, comprising that part of the Australian continent which presents in the widest range of its extremes the irregularities of the country's very peculiar climate. Remote alike on one side from the moderating tropical rains, on the other from the equalizing influences of the sea, destitute of high mountain chains and extensive forests to draw down and retain moisture, the whole expanse is virtually a naked plain, basking under a semitropical sun. The rain supply is in the main inadequate for so warm and exposed a country; besides that it is of capricious occurrence; the evaporative force, therefore, is mostly in the ascendant, and the high winds that often scour the vast and open expanse acquire their dry and hot character as they pass over the dessicated country. Meteorological conditions cause these hot winds to blow towards the southern seas, where they are at length arrested, changed in