This obstruction was apparently six or seven miles across, but whether what we took for its opposite shores were islands or the main, I could not determine. We saw several sandhill islands, some very high and deeply red, to which the mirage gave the effect of their floating in an ocean of water. Farther along the shore eastwards were several high red sandhills; to these we went and dug another well and got more brine. We could see the lake stretching away east or east-south-east as far as the glasses could carry the vision. Here we made another attempt to cross, but the horses were all floundering about in the bottomless bed of this infernal lake before we could look round. I made sure they would be swallowed up before our eyes. We were powerless to help them, for we could not get near owing to the bog, and we sank up over our knees, where the crust was broken, in hot salt mud. All I could do was to crack my whip to prevent the horses from ceasing to exert themselves, and although it was but a few moments that they were in this danger, to me it seemed an eternity. They staggered at last out of the quagmire, heads, backs, saddles, everything covered with blue mud, their mouths were filled with salt mud also, and they were completely exhausted when they reached firm ground. We let them rest in the shade of some quandong trees, which grew in great numbers round about here. From Mount Udor to the shores of this lake the country had been continually falling. The northern base of each ridge, as we travelled, seemed higher by many feet than the southern, and I had hoped to come upon something better than this. I thought such a continued fall of country might lead to a considerable watercourse or freshwater basin; but this salt bog was dreadful, the more especially as it prevented me reaching the mountain which appeared so inviting beyond.
Not seeing any possibility of pushing south, and thinking after all it might not be so far round the lake to the west, I turned to where we had struck the first salt channel, and resolved to try what a more westerly line would produce. The channel in question was now some fifteen miles away to the north-westward, and by the time we got back there the day was done and “the darkness had fallen from the wings of night.” We had travelled nearly fifty miles, the horses were almost dead; the thermometer stood at 100° in the shade when we rested under the quandongs. In the night blankets were unendurable. Had there been any food for them the horses could not eat for thirst, and were too much fatigued by yesterday's toil to go out of sight of our camping place. We followed along the course of the lake north of west for seven miles, when we were checked by a salt arm running north-eastwards; this we could not cross until we had gone up it a distance of three miles. Then we made for some low ridges lying west-south-west and reached them in twelve miles. There was neither watercourse, channel, nor rock-holes; we wandered for several miles round the ridges, looking for water, but without success, and got back on our morning's tracks when we had travelled thirty miles. From the top of these ridges the lake could be seen stretching away to the west or west-south-west in vast proportions, having several salt arms running back from it at various distances. Very far to the west was another ridge, but it was too distant for me to reach now, as to-night the horses would have been two nights without water, and the probability was they would get none there if they reached it. I determined to visit it, however, but I felt I must first return to the tank in the little glen to refresh the exhausted horses. From where we are, the prospect is wild and weird, with the white bed of the great lake sweeping nearly the whole southern horizon. The country near the lake consists of open sandhills, thickly bushed and covered with triodia; farther back grew casuarinas and mulga scrubs.
It was long past the middle of the day when I descended from the hill. We had no alternative but to return to the only spot where we knew water was to be had; this was now distant twenty-one miles to the north-east, so we departed in a straight line for it. I was heartily annoyed at being baffled in my attempt to reach the mountain, which I now thought more than ever would offer a route out of this terrible region; but it seemed impossible to escape from it. I named this eminence Mount Olga, and the great salt feature which obstructed me Lake Amadeus, in honour of two enlightened royal patrons of science. The horses were now exceedingly weak; the bogging of yesterday had taken a great deal of strength out of them, and the heat of the last two days had contributed to weaken them (the thermometer to-day went up to 101° in shade). They could now only travel slowly, so that it was late at night when we reached the little tank. Fifty miles over such disheartening country to-day has been almost too much for the poor animals. In the tank there was only sufficient water for one horse; the others had to be tied up and wait their turns to drink, and the water percolated so slowly through the sand it was nearly midnight before they were all satisfied and begun to feed. What wonderful creatures horses are! They can work for two and three days and go three nights without water, but they can go for ever without sleep; it is true they do sleep, but equally true that they can go without sleeping. If I took my choice of all creation for a beast to guard and give me warning while I slept, I would select the horse, for he is the most sleepless creature Nature has made. Horses seem to know this; for if you should by chance catch one asleep he seems very indignant either with you or himself.
It was absolutely necessary to give our horses a day's rest, as they looked so much out of sorts this morning. A quarter of the day was spent in watering them, and by that time it was quite hot, and we had to erect an awning for shade. We were overrun by ants, and pestered by flies, so in self-defence we took another walk into the gullies, revisited the aboriginal National Gallery of paintings and hieroglyphics, and then returned to our shade and our ants. Again we pored over the little German map, and again envied more prosperous explorers. The thermometer had stood at 101° in the shade, and the greatest pleasure we experienced that day was to see the orb of day descend. The atmosphere had been surcharged all day with smoke, and haze hung over all the land, for the Autochthones were ever busy at their hunting fires, especially upon the opposite side of the great lake; but at night the blaze of nearer ones kept up a perpetual light, and though the fires may have been miles away they appeared to be quite close. I also had fallen into the custom of the country, and had set fire to several extensive beds of triodia, which had burned with unabated fury; so brilliant, indeed, was the illumination that I could see to read by the light. I kindled these fires in hopes some of the natives might come and interview us, but no doubt in such a poorly watered region the native population cannot be great, and the few who do inhabit it had evidently abandoned this particular portion of it until rains should fall and enable them to hunt while water remained in it.
Last night, the 23rd October, was sultry, and blankets utterly useless. The flies and ants were wide awake, and the only thing we could congratulate ourselves upon, was the absence of mosquitoes. At dawn the thermometer stood at 70° and a warm breeze blew gently from the north. The horses were found early, but as it took nearly three hours to water them we did not leave the glen till past eight o'clock. This time I intended to return to the ridges we had last left, and which now bore a little to the west of south-west, twenty-one miles away. We made a detour so as to inspect some other ridges near where we had been last. Stony and low ridgy ground was first met, but the scrubs were all around. At fifteen miles we came upon a little firm clayey plain with some salt bushes, and it also had upon it some clay pans, but they had long been dry. We found the northern face of the ridges just as waterless as the southern, which we had previously searched. The far hills or ridges to the west, which I now intended to visit, bore nearly west. Another salt bush plain was next crossed; this was nearly three miles long. We now gave the horses an hour's spell, the thermometer showing 102° in the shade; then, re-saddling, we went on, and it was nine o'clock at night when we found ourselves under the shadows of the hills we had steered for, having them on the north of us.
I searched in the dark, but could find no feature likely to supply us with water; we had to encamp in a nest of triodia without any water, having travelled forty-eight miles through the usual kind of country that occupies this region's space. At daylight the thermometer registered 70°, that being the lowest during the night. On ascending the hill above us, there was but one feature to gaze upon—the lake still stretching away, not only in undiminished, but evidently increasing size, towards the west and north-west. Several lateral channels were thrown out from the parent bed at various distances, some broad and some narrow. A line of ridges, with one hill much more prominent than any I had seen about this country, appeared close down upon the shores of the lake; it bore from the hill I stood upon south 68° west, and was about twenty miles off. A long broad salt arm, however, ran up at the back of it between it and me, but just opposite there appeared a narrow place that I thought we might cross to reach it.
The ridge I was on was red granite, but there was neither creek nor rock-hole about it. We now departed for the high hill westward, crossing a very boggy salt channel with great difficulty, at five miles; in five more we came to the arm. It appeared firm, but unfortunately one of the horses got frightfully bogged, and it was only by the most frantic exertions that we at length got him out. The bottom of this dreadful feature, if it has a bottom, seems composed entirely of hot, blue, briny mud. Our exertions in extricating the horse made us extremely thirsty; the hill looked more inviting the nearer we got to it, so, still hoping to reach it, I followed up the arm for about seven miles in a north west direction. It proved, however, quite impassable, and it seemed utterly useless to attempt to reach the range, as we could not tell how far we might have to travel before we could get round the arm. I believe it continues in a semicircle and joins the lake again, thus isolating the hill I wished to visit. This now seemed an island it was impossible to reach. We were sixty-five miles away from the only water we knew of, with no likelihood of any nearer; there might certainly be water at the mount I wished to reach, but it was unapproachable, and I called it by that name; no doubt, had I been able to reach it, my progress would still have been impeded to the west by the huge lake itself. I could get no water except brine upon its shores, and I had no appliances to distil that; could I have done so, I would have followed this feature, hideous as it is, as no doubt sooner or later some watercourses must fall into it either from the south or the west. We were, however, a hundred miles from the camp, with only one man left there, and sixty-five from the nearest water. I had no choice but to retreat, baffled, like Eyre with his Lake Torrens in 1840, at all points. On the southern shore of the lake, and apparently a very long way off, a range of hills bore south 30° west; this range had a pinkish appearance and seemed of some length. Mr. Carmichael wished me to call it McNicol's Range, after a friend of his, and this I did. We turned our wretched horses' heads once more in the direction of our little tank, and had good reason perhaps to thank our stars that we got away alive from the lone unhallowed shore of this pernicious sea. We kept on twenty-eight miles before we camped, and looked at two or three places, on the way ineffectually, for some signs of water, having gone forty-seven miles; thermometer in shade 103°, the heat increasing one degree a day for several days. When we camped we were hungry, thirsty, tired, covered all over with dry salt mud; so that it is not to be wondered at if our spirits were not at a very high point, especially as we were making a forced retreat. The night was hot, cloudy, and sultry, and rain clouds gathered in the sky. At about 1 a.m. the distant rumblings of thunder were heard to the west-north-west, and I was in hopes some rain might fall, as it was apparently approaching; the thunder was not loud, but the lightning was most extraordinarily vivid; only a few drops of rain fell, and the rest of the night was even closer and more sultry than before.
Ere the stars had left the sky we were in our saddles again; the horses looked most pitiable objects, their flanks drawn in, the natural vent was distended to an open and extraordinary cavity; their eyes hollow and sunken, which is always the case with horses when greatly in want of water. Two days of such stages will thoroughly test the finest horse that ever stepped. We had thirty-six miles yet to travel to reach the water. The horses being so jaded, it was late in the afternoon when they at last crawled into the little glen; the last few miles being over stones made the pace more slow. Not even their knowledge of the near presence of water availed to inspirit them in the least; probably they knew they would have to wait for hours at the tank, when they arrived, before their cravings for water could be appeased. The thermometer to-day was 104° in the shade. When we arrived the horses had walked 131 miles without a drink, and it was no wonder that the poor creatures were exhausted. When one horse had drank what little water there was, we had to re-dig the tank, for the wind or some other cause had knocked a vast amount of the sand into it again. Some natives also had visited the place while we were away, their fresh tracks were visible in the sand around, and on the top of the tank. They must have stared to see such a piece of excavation in their territory. When the horses did get water, two of them rolled, and groaned, and kicked, so that I thought they were going to die; one was a mare, she seemed the worst, another was a strong young horse which had carried me well, the third was my old favourite riding-horse; this time he had only carried the pack, and was badly bogged; he was the only one that did not appear distressed when filled with water, the other two lay about in evident pain until morning. About the middle of the night thunder was again heard, and flash after flash of even more vivid lightnings than that of the previous night enlightened the glen; so bright were the flashes, being alternately fork and sheet lightning, that for nearly an hour the glare never ceased. The thunder was much louder than last night's, and a slight mizzling rain for about an hour fell. The barometer had fallen considerably for the last two days, so I anticipated a change. The rain was too slight to be of any use; the temperature of the atmosphere, however, was quite changed, for by the morning the thermometer was down to 48°.
The horses were not fit to travel, so we had to remain, with nothing to do, but consult the little map again, and lay off my position on it. My farthest point I found to be in latitude 24° 38´ and longitude 130°. For the second time I had reached nearly the same meridian. I had been repulsed at both points, which were about a hundred miles apart, in the first instance by dry stony ranges in the midst of dense scrubs, and in the second by a huge salt lake equally destitute of fresh water. It appears to me plain enough that a much more northerly or else more southerly course must be pursued to reach the western coast, at all events in such a country, it will be only by time and perseverance that any explorer can penetrate it. I think I remarked before that we entered this little glen through a pass about half-a-mile long, between two hills of red sandstone. I named this Worrill's Pass, after another friend of Mr. Carmichael. The little glen in which we dug out the tank I could only call Glen Thirsty, for we never returned to it but ourselves and our horses, were choking for water. Our supply of rations, although we had eked it out with the greatest possible economy, was consumed, for we brought only a week's supply, and we had now been absent ten days from home, and we should have to fast all to-morrow, until we reached the depot; but as the horses were unable to carry us, we were forced to remain.
During the day I had a long conversation with Mr. Carmichael upon our affairs in general, and our stock of provisions in particular; the conclusion we arrived at was, that having been nearly three months out, we had not progressed so far in the time as we had expected. We had found the country so dry that until rains fell, it seemed scarcely probable that we should be able to penetrate farther to the west, and if we had to remain in depot for a month or two, it was necessary by some means to economise our stores, and the only way to do so was to dispense with the services of Alec Robinson. It would be necessary, of course, in the first place, to find a creek to the eastward, which would take him to the Finke, and by the means of the same watercourse we might eventually get round to the southern shores of Lake Amadeus, and reach Mount Olga at last.