Kanawalla Desert

The Kanawalla, or White Desert, is a trackless waste covering much of central Mu and by far the biggest desert anyone knows of. Many scholars have written about it, but none match the first-hand account of the Atlantean explorer and historian Melkurion.

He found sands like drifted snow reaching to every horizon. Tests showed the soil to be very salty, explaining the near-absence of plants and supporting the idea that much of Mu was once under the sea; if so, Zephyr stories of half-buried ships in the desert may hold some truth, though he found none. Life was scarce: sand fleas, spiders and a deadly white scorpion almost invisible against the sand. One sting killed a mule within seconds, and Melkurion milked each of several three-inch specimens and got nearly 1/4 dram of venom apiece. An antidote seemed a distant hope, since no one in the party would volunteer for the research.

He warned that a traveler needs at least two quarts of water a day in the heat, and that glare off the white sand brings on a snow blindness lasting 2-12 hours unless the eyes are shaded by a hood or wide-brimmed hat. Wyverns sometimes visit, so stout bows are wise. The Zephyr kept warning of 'snakes', their word for saurian humanoids that sound like kin of the lizard-riders of the Gondwanan deserts whom the Turanians call Ahl-At-Rab, though many in the party thought this a tall tale.

That was the last entry in his logbook, which a Zephyr chieftain later gave to a merchant of Ophir. Melkurion's party never came back, and they may well have met the 'snakes'.