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The building of the fortress took eight years of continuous labour, and the cost was thirty-five lakhs of rupees. It is built, as I have said, of red sandstone, the stones being well joined together and fastened to each other by iron rings which pass through them. The foundation everywhere reaches water.
It will be seen from our last few days' experience, and from that of the few days soon to follow, that in this region rock-holes are numerous. They are invariably situated on low surface outcrops of 'desert sandstone, surrounded by mulga and grass; beyond that, sand.
In a dry, hot, monotonous forested plateau, seemingly boundless, you come suddenly and without warning upon the abrupt edge of a gigantic sunken landscape of the wildest, most multitudinous features, and those features, sharp and angular, are made out of flat beds of limestone and sandstone forming a spiry, jagged, gloriously colored mountain range countersunk in a level gray plain.
Continuing our journey in a north-west direction, we passed over some very rocky hills, composed of indurated clay, and thin strata of sandstone, and pudding-stone. By moving along the foot of a range of high hills, we avoided all those deep gullies which intersected the banks of the river, and travelled with ease through a flat, well grassed Ironbark forest.
All day they journeyed through its savage interstices and struggled with its monstrosities of trap and sandstone. Twice they halted in narrow valleys, where a little loam had collected and a little moisture had been retained, affording meagre sustenance to some thin grass and scattered bushes. The animals browsed, but there was nothing for them to drink, and all began to suffer with thirst.
Should a northern branch eventually be discovered, which the delta and numerous ana-branches make a probable hypothesis, the stream explored by the brothers might with propriety retain the name they gave it. At eight miles from the start the character of the country changed from the prevailing flats, to a kind of barren sandstone and spenifex ridges.
Granite and sandstone rocks outcrop even in the general sandy level, rising bare and perpendicularly from 50 to 300 feet; as a late traveller describes it, "looking like a mere clean skeleton of the world." Nothing is visible but pure rock on every side. Vast stones lie heaped up into pyramids, as if they had been rent from the sky.
Even Hugh Miller's "The Old Red Sandstone, or New Walks in an Old Field," then over thirty years old, was still being looked upon as dangerously original in the Five Towns in 1873.
When I was on the spot the former appeared to me to have some analogy with zechstein, or Alpine limestone; the latter with Jura limestone; I even thought that the granular gypsum of Guire might be that which belongs in Europe to zechstein, or is placed between zechstein and variegated sandstone.
It was heavy, but not heavy enough to be sandstone, and the sheen was not that of a mineral. Whatever the material, it had been fashioned in one piece, probably cast in a mold. "I give up," he said. "What is it?" "Plastic," Bartouki replied, obviously pleased. "It did not come from Egypt. It was made right here in America. In Chicago, to be exact. It is what you call a prototype."
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