As we overlooked it from the higher ground it was dark, with a snow-white patch of sand in the centre; on traversing it we found that its productions were almost entirely samphire-bushes growing on a salty soil.
The white patch we had seen from a distance was the dry bed of a shallow salt lagoon also fringed round with samphire bushes, and being in our course we crossed it.

There was a fine coating of salt on its surface, together with gypsum and clay, as at Lake Torrens.

The country for several miles round it was barren beyond description, and small nodules of limestone were scattered over the ground in many places.

After leaving the lagoon, which though moist had been sufficiently hard to bear our weight, we passed amidst tortuous and stunted box-trees for about three miles; then crossed the small dry and bare bed of a water-course, that was shaded by trees of better appearance, and almost immediately afterwards found ourselves on the outskirts of extensive and beautifully grassed plains, similar to that on which I had fixed the Depot, and most probably owing, like them, their formation to the overflow of the last, or some other creek we had traced.

The character of the country we had previously travelled over being so very bad, the change to the park-like scene now before us was very remarkable.