1591,Edmund Spenser,The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5:
So thou both here and there immortall art, And everie where through excellent desart.
1786,Boswell,Life Of Johnson, Volume 5:
Probably he had been thinking of the whole of the simile in Cato, of which that is the concluding line; the sandy desart had struck him so strongly.
1871,James Fenimore Cooper,Wyandotte:
We are like people on a desart island, out here in the wilderness--and if ships won't arrive to tell us how matters come on, we must send one out to l'arn it for us.