From our first position we went to the next, a hill of
about 450 feet in height, perfectly flat-topped, and detached from the
main group.
In crossing over to this point the ground was stony, but there was a good
deal of grass growing in tufts upon it, and bare patches of blistered
earth on which flat stools of gypsum were apparently in process of
formation. Immediately to the left there were five remarkable conical
hills. These we successively passed, and then entered a narrow, short
valley, between the last of these cones and the hill we were about to
ascend. The ground was covered with fragments of indurated quartz (of
which the whole group was composed), in parallelograms of different
dimensions. The scene was like that of a city whose structures had been
shaken to pieces by an earthquake--one of ruin and desolation. The faces
of the hills, both here and in other parts of the group, were cracked by
solar heat, and thus the rock was scaling off. We were here obliged to
dismount and walk. The day being insufferably hot, it was no pleasant
task to climb under such exposure to an elevation of nearly 500 feet. We
had frequently to take breath during our ascent, and reached the summit
of the hill somewhat exhausted. The view was precisely similar to that we
had overlooked from the opposite point, which bore W. by N. from us.
Again the two little peaks were visible to the N.
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