f the lake were salt or fresh,
although I feared they were salt. Looking on it, however, I saw clearly
that it was very shallow; a line of poles ran across it, such as are used
by the natives for catching wild fowl, of which there were an abundance,
as well as of hematops on the water. As soon as we descended from the
sand ridge we got on a narrow native path, that led us down to a hut,
about 100 yards from the shore of the lake.

As we approached the water, the effluvia from it was exceedingly
offensive, and the ground became a soft, black muddy sand. On tasting it
we found that the water was neither one thing or the other, neither salt
or fresh, but wholly unfit for use. Close to its margin there was a broad
path leading to the eastward, or rather round the lake; and under the
sand ridge to the west, were twenty-seven huts, but they had long been
deserted, and were falling to decay. Nevertheless they proved that the
waters of the lake were sometimes drinkable, or that the natives had some
other supply of fresh water at no great distance, from whence they could
easily come to take wild fowl, nor could I doubt such place would be the
creek.

Notwithstanding that the water was so bad, I tried several places by
digging, but invariably came to salt water, oozing through black mud, and
I there fore presumed that a good deal of rain must have fallen
hereabouts, to have tempered the water of the lake so much; which it
struck me would otherwise have been quite saline. From the point where we
first came down upon it, we traversed a flat beach covered with a short
coarse rush, having the high red sand hill, of which I have spoken, to
our left; before us a vast extent of low white sand, and to the eastward
an extremely dark and depressed country. I was really afraid of entering
on the scorching sands in our front, for we were now full 90 miles from
the creek, and it was absolutely necessary, before I should exceed that
distance, to find a more permanent supply of water than the wells we had
dug on our way out. In order to ascertain the nature of the country more
satisfactorily, however, I ascended the rugged termination of the sandy
ridge, close to which we had been riding, and was induced, from what I
then saw, to determine on a course somewhat to the west of north, since a
due north course was evidently closed upon me; for I now saw that the
country in that direction was hopeless, as well as in an easterly
direction; but altho