r, in the desert. It runs throughout its entire length once in
every three or four years, though each yearly rainy season floods it in
certain parts. In the dry season one might in many places ride right
across its course without being aware of it. In the wet season such parts
of it are swamps and marshes, over which its waters spread to a width of
five and six miles. Permanent pools are numerous, and occur wherever a
ridge of sandstone rock runs across the course of the creek. On either
side of the creek fine grass-plains spread East and West. The further
South the creek goes, the less good is the country on the East side;
presently there is no grass country except on the West side. Not far
below the station the creek is joined by the Wolf, which, like all
Kimberley creeks, is fringed with gums, Bauhinia, and Leichardt-trees.
From the confluence downwards a war between the grass-lands and the
desert is waged for the supremacy of the river-banks. For miles the sandy
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 d