324 TRAVELS IN 
ber of cattle, are the produce of the farms at the feet oi 
these mountains. At one place they were distilling an ardent 
spirit of no disagreeable flavor from water-melons, the largest 
which to my recollection I had ever seen. 
The deep sandy plains were succeeded by still deeper 
sandy hills, over which the waggon made but very slow pro- 
gress, the wheels sinking to the axes every moment. These 
hills, or rather mountains, of sand, extended near thirty miles 
beyond the point of the Picquet berg, before they attained 
their greatest elevation, where a very curious and grand spec- 
tacle presented itself. Along the summit, which was several 
miles in width, rose out of the coarse crystallized sand and 
fragments of sandstone, a multitude of pyramidal columns, 
some of which were several hundred feet in diameter, and as 
many in height; these, viewed from a distance, had the re- 
gular appearance of works of art. The materials were also 
sandstone, bound together by veins of a firmer texture, con- 
taining a portion of iron. The cavernous appearance of these 
peaked columns, that had hitherto withstood, though not 
entirely escaped, the corroding tooth of time, and the vicissi- 
tudes of devouring weather, proclaimed their vast antiquity ; 
and the coarse sand in which their bases were buried, and the 
fragments of the same material that were scattered over the 
surface, and not yet crumbled away, were sufficiently demon- 
strative that these pyramids had once been united, making at 
that time one connected mountain, similar to the great 
northern range. Out of the mouldered remains of these 
mountains had been formed the inferior hills of sand, while 
the finer particles, wafted by the winds and the torrents, have 
