At
sundown we descended into a hollow; I thought this would prove the bed
of another salt lake, but I found it to be a rain-water basin or very
large clay-pan, and although there were signs of the former presence
of natives, the whole basin, grass, and herbage about it, were as dry
as the desert around. Having found a place where water could lodge, I
was certainly disappointed at finding none in it, as this showed that
no rain whatever had fallen here, where it might have remained, when
we had good but useless showers immediately upon leaving the dam. From
the appearance of the vegetation no rains could possibly have visited
this spot for many months, if not years. The grass was white and dry,
and ready to blow away with any wind.
(ILLUSTRATION: IN QUEEN VICTORIA'S DESERT.)
We had now travelled 242 miles from the little dam, and I thought it
advisable here to give our lion-hearted camels a day's respite, and to
apportion out to them the water that some of them had carried for that
purpose. By the time we reached this distance from the last water,
although no one had openly uttered the word retreat, all knowing it
would be useless, still I was not unassailed by croakings of some of
the ravens of the party, who advised me, for the sake of saving our
own and some of the camels' lives, to sacrifice a certain number of
the worst, and not give these unfortunates any water at all.
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