chotts

So he put the hour-hand of his patience a little ahead; and Victoria and he were outwardly on the same terms as before when they left Ouargla, and passed on to the region of the low dunes, shaped like the tents of nomads buried under sand, the region of beautiful jewelled stones of all colours, and the region of the chotts, the desert lakes, like sad, wide-open eyes in a dead face.

The Golden Silence 1901

She looked westward, across the river to the ugly village with the dried palm-leaves on its roofs, and far away to the white-domed city, the dimpling oases and the mountainous dunes that towered against a flaming sky; then eastward, towards the two vast desert lakes, or chotts, one of blue water, the other of saltpetre, which looked bluer than water, and had pale edges that met the sand like snow on gold.

The Golden Silence 1901

These districts occupy the beds of vast ancient lakes, now almost dry, of which the existing _chotts_, or very salt pools, are the last shrunken and evanescent relics.

Falling in Love With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science Grant Allen 1873