channel, cut out like a large drain through the country, less than one
chain wide in places, is hemmed in on either side by desert gums and
spinifex, and once out of sight of the creek the surrounding land
receives no benefit from the water.

But lower down again, about the latitude of Mount Mueller, the grass plains
gain the day; and a very pretty bit of country they form too, especially
when the creek is running, as it was when we were there. In many places
its waters had overflowed the banks, expanding into clay-pans and lagoons
of beautiful clear water where teal and whistling duck disported
themselves.

The Wolf rises on the opposite slope of the watershed to Christmas Creek
and the Mary River, and floods twice or thrice a year. Below its junction
with the Sturt the combined creek takes on itself the character of the
Wolf, and at the point of confluence the Sturt may be said to end. Seeing
how seldom the Sturt runs its entire length and how small its channel is
at this point, smaller than that of the Wolf, I think that it is to the
latter that the lakes (Gregory's "Salt Sea") chiefly owe their existence.
However that may be, the combined waters fill but an insignificant
channel and one can hardly credit that this creek has a length of nearly
three hundred miles.

On nearing the lakes the creek assumes so dismal an appearance, and so
funereal is the aspect of the dead scrub and dark tops of the "boree" (a
kind of mulga), that one wonders that Gregory did not choose the name of
"Dead" instead of merely "Salt Sea." A curious point about this lower
part of the creek is, that stretches of fresh and salt water alternate.
The stream, as we saw it, was only just running in the lower reaches; in
places it ran under the sandy bed, and in this part the salt pools