These detached hills were perfectly level at the top, and their sides declined at an angle of 54 degrees.

The main group as we now saw it appeared to consist of a number of projecting points, connected by semicircular sweeps of greater or less depth.

There was no vegetation on the sides either of the detached hills or of the projecting points, but they consisted of a compact white quartz, that had been split by solar heat into innumerable fragments in the form of parallelograms.
Vast heaps of these laid at the base of the hills, and resembled the ruins of a town, the edifices of which had been shaken to pieces by an earthquake, and on a closer examination it appeared to me that a portion of the rock thus scaled off periodically.

We approached these hills by a gradual ascent, over ground exceedingly stony in places; but as we neared them it became less so, the soil being a decomposition of the geological structure of the hills.

It was covered with a long kind of grass in tufts, but growing closer together than usual.