Lake, a salt lake or marsh in the interior of Australia. It was discovered by Eyre in 1840, who came upon its southern extremity in travelling northwards from Spencer Gulf, and found it to be from 15 to 20 miles in breadth, and to extend 40 or 50 to the north, without any termination visible. Eyre afterwards travelled northwards along the west foot of the Flinders range, and traversed the low country beyond these mountains in three different directions. In each of them his progress was arrested by a marshy sheet of water similar to that of Lake Torrens. Hence he concluded that these formed parts of one large lake, which, in the form of a horse-shoe, encircled the plains at the end of Flinders range. The water of the lake was salt, and its shores were for the most part inaccessible, on account of the marshes that skirted them. The length of this lake was supposed to be about 400 miles, and the breadth to be almost uniform throughout; but the greater part of the area thus occupied was stated to be dry, though consisting of such soft sand and mud as to be impossible to cross. In recent years, however, fresh discoveries have been made in this region, which have shown that the inference drawn from the explorations of Eyre, as to the existence of a large lake of a horse-shoe form, was erroneous; and that, instead of one lake, there is only a chain of smaller ones, between which there is at least one broad tract of dry land, affording access to an extent of good pasturage country to the N.W. beyond. This discovery was made in 1858, by an expedition sent out by the South Australian Government under Mr Babbage, who was afterwards joined by Mr Gregory; while the regions to the N.W. were traversed in the same year by a private explorer, Mr Macdougall Stuart. The name of Lake Torrens is now restricted to the most southerly of the chain, that of Lake Gregory being given to the one further to the north.