A WARM STREAM 
After that we came to a thick growth of bamboos and 
brush on reaching the banks of a streamlet winding its 
way north. 
Travelling up and down, all day and day after day, 
over those undulations became tedious work; red sand, 
whitish sand, grey ashes, all the time. 
On the west side, on descending the last prominence, 
we at last came to a slight variation in the geological 
composition of the country. After more white sand and 
ashes had been passed, we came upon great stretches of 
greenish grey granite, exposed in huge domes and much 
striated, with parallel grooves on its surface so deep that 
they almost looked as if they had been incised by a sharp 
tool. These grooves were, nevertheless, naturally caused 
by the sharp friction of sand and water, I think, and also 
by sand blown over those rocks with terrific force by 
winds of inconceivable vigour. All the way down our 
descent we travelled over that striated rock. It had 
become exposed to the air, but once must have been buried 
under sand and ashes, like all the rest of that region. 
Curious vertical cracks were to be noticed in several places, 
with ramifications from a common centre, evidently caused 
by the concussion of some huge weight which had fallen 
from above, perhaps a huge boulder shot out by vol¬ 
canic action, which had then rolled farther down the 
incline. 
The terminal side of the curious range we had on our 
right appeared not unlike a fortress, with its vertical walls 
standing upon a slanting bastion. 
At the bottom (elevation 1,200 feet) of the great dome 
of granite we had travelled upon, we crossed a stream 
flowing southwest, the water of which was quite warm. 
The high temperature was due, I think, to the heat ab¬ 
sorbed by the rock exposed to the sun and communicated 
to the water flowing over it, rather than to a thermal 
origin. 
175 
