They Seemed Very Low, And Quite Unlikely To Produce Water.

Reaching the first, we ascended it, and I could see at a glance that any prospect of finding water

Was utterly hopeless, as these low ridges, which ran north and south, were merely a few oblique-lying layers of upheaved granite, not much higher than the sandhills which surrounded them, and there was no place where water could lodge even during rains. Not a rise could be seen in any direction, except, of course, from where we had come. We went on west five or six miles farther to the end of these, just about sundown: and long, indeed, will that peculiar sunset rest in my recollection. The sun as usual was a huge and glaring ball of fire that with his last beams shot hot and angry glances of hate at us, in rage at our defiance of his might. It was so strange and so singular that only at this particular sunset, out of the millions which have elapsed since this terrestrial ball first floated in ether, that I, or indeed any White man, should stand upon this wretched hill, so remote from the busy haunts of my fellow men. My speculations upon the summit, if, indeed, so insignificant a mound can be said to have a summit, were as wild and as incongruous as the regions which stretched out before me. In the first place I could only conclude that no water could exist in this region, at least as far as the sand beds extend.

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