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Updated: June 23, 2025
To this succeeded a barren flat of silt and sand, white with salt and ragged with salsolaceous stubble, reeking with heat, and covered with old vegetation. Here, says local tradition, was the ancient site of Zayla , built by Arabs from Yemen. The legend runs that when Saad el Din was besieged and slain by David, King of Ethiopia, the wells dried up and the island sank.
These plains are destitute of water, grass, and timber, and have only a few salsolaceous plants growing upon them; whilst their surface, whether stony or sandy, is quite smooth and even, as if washed so by the action of the water.
There was scarcely any vegetation, a proof, it struck me, that it retains water on its surface till the summer is so advanced that the sun's rays are too powerful for any plants that may spring up, or that the heat bakes the soil so that nothing can force itself through. There was little, if any grass to be seen; but the mesembryanthemum reappeared upon it, with other salsolaceous plants.
Acacia pendula now made its appearance on several plains beyond the river deposits, as well as that salsolaceous class of plants, among which the schlerolina and rhagodia are so remarkable. The natives left us at sunset, but returned early in the morning with an extremely facetious and good-humoured old man, who volunteered to act as our guide without the least hesitation.
We had on our journey to the westward found an abundance of grass on the sand ridges as well as the flats; but in this desert there was not a blade to be seen. The ridges were covered with spinifex, through which we found it difficult to force a way, and the flats with salsolaceous productions alone.
It grows upon a low creeping tap-rooted plant, of a salsolaceous character, found in the alluvial flats of the Murray, among the polygonum brushes, and in many other places. A single plant will spread over an area of many yards in diameter, covering the dry and arid ground with a close, soft, and velvety carpet in the heat of summer, at which time the fruit is in perfection.
The banks of the fresh water creek were crowded with water-hens, similar to those which visited Adelaide in such countless numbers the year before I proceeded into the interior . They were running about like so many fowls; but, on being alarmed, took flight and went south. The country we now passed through was of a salsolaceous character, like a low barren sea coast.
After giving five gallons of water each to my own and the native boy's horse, I sent back the man with the pack-horse and the empty kegs to the depot. These hollows or flats were covered with salsolaceous plants and samphire, and appeared once to have been salt swamps.
It appears that the people have no implements, and are too barbarous to be capable of so simple an engineering operation as digging. The vegetation presents the usual appearance of salsolaceous plants thinly scattered over the surface, with here and there a stunted growth of Arman or Acacia.
As I have already observed, there were a great variety of the cereal grasses about Flood's Creek, but they merely occupied a small belt on either side of it. All the grasses were exceedingly green, and there was a surprising appearance of verdure along the creek. Beyond it, on both sides, were barren stony plains, on which salsolaceous plants alone grew.
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