described than by quoting the words of its discoverer, Ernest Giles,
in 1875, who, with a party of five companions, fifteen pack, and seven
riding camels, happened on this spring just when they most needed water.

Giles says of it:--

"It is the most singularly placed water I have ever seen, lying in a small
hollow in the centre of a little grassy flat and surrounded by clumps of
funereal pines. . . . The water is no doubt permanent, for it is supplied
by the drainage of the sandhills which surround it and it rests on a
substratum of impervious clay. It lies exposed to view in a small, open
basin, the water being about only one hundred and fifty yards in
circumference and from two to three feet deep. Further up the slopes at
much higher levels native wells had been sunk in all directions--in each
and all of these there was water. Beyond the immediate precincts of this
open space the scrubs abound. . . . Before I leave this spot I had perhaps
better remark that it might prove a very difficult, perhaps dangerous,
place to any other traveller to attempt to find, because although there
are many white sandhills in the neighbourhood, the open space on which
the water lies is so small in area and so closely surrounded by scrubs,
that it cannot be seen from any conspicuous one, nor can any conspicuous
sandhill, distinguishable at any distance, be seen from it. On the top of
the banks above the wells was a beaten corroboree path, where the denizens
of the desert have often held their feasts and dances. Some grass-trees
grew in the vicinity of this spring to a height of over twenty
feet. . . ."

A charming spot indeed! but we found it to be hardly so cheerful as this
description would lead one to expect. For at first sight the Spring was
dry. The pool of water was now a dry clay-pan; the numerous native wells