. This belt
of Sahara extended, roughly speaking, from the eastern border of the
colony to the head waters of the western coastal rivers. North and south
it lay between the parallels of 19 degrees and 31 degrees south. As yet
no daring attempt had been made to traverse its barren confines from
south to north. But, to the born explorer, difficulty and danger give an
added zest to geographical research; and in the year 1896 two separate
expeditions sought to cross this dreadful zone. Both left civilization
within a few days of each other. The first to start was known as the
Calvert Expedition, from its originator. It was under L.A. Wells, the
South Australian surveyor who had been the energetic second of the former
Elder Expedition. The other was equipped and led by the Honourable David
Carnegie.

Wells formed a depot at a spot well provided with camel feed and water,
at some distance to the south-west of Forrest's Lake Augusta, which he
found, at that time, dry. Here he left the main part of his caravan to
await his return whilst he made a flying trip to the north. He was away
from the 10th of August to the 8th of September, during which he found at
his furthest point, a distance of two hundred miles, a good native well,
which he named Midway Well. On the 14th of September the whole party made
a start, and reached Midway Well on the 29th, all well. At Separation
Well, another good well a little farther to the north, the party
separated, C.F. Wells, a cousin of the leader, and G.L. Jones, intending
to travel for about eighty miles in a north-west direction to examine the
country, and then to return on a north-east course and rejoin the caravan
at Joanna Springs, which had relieved Warburton in his extremity. About
thirty miles south of Joanna Springs, where the leader expected the two
men to cut his tracks, Wells found his camels suffering terribly from the
extreme heat and their labours among the constantly-recurring
sand-ridges, whilst the scanty native wells they found were insufficient
to give their camels water. When at last they reached the latitude of
Joanna Springs they had been obliged to abandon three camels and all
their equipment except the actual necessaries.

It was also evident that the longitude of the springs given by Warburton
was wrong, for all the country around was a sandy desert without the
slightest indication of well or spring. To linger in such a spot was to
court destruction, and they had to pus