They are not thrown together into irregular piles, but are spread out into level sheets or great streams.

It is not possible to ascertain their thickness, but the water of small streamlets can be heard trickling through the stones many feet below the surface.

The actual depth is probably great, because the crevices between the lower fragments must long ago have been filled up with sand.

The width of these sheets of stones varies from a few hundred feet to a mile; but the peaty soil daily encroaches on the borders, and even forms islets wherever a few fragments happen to lie close together.
In a valley south of Berkeley Sound, which some of our party called the "great valley of fragments," it was necessary to cross an uninterrupted band half a mile wide, by jumping from one pointed stone to another.

So large were the fragments, that being overtaken by a shower of rain, I readily found shelter beneath one of them.
Their little inclination is the most remarkable circumstance in these "streams of stones." On the hill-sides I have seen them sloping at an angle of ten degrees with the horizon; but in some of the level, broad-bottomed valleys, the inclination is only just sufficient to be clearly perceived.