By this time we were close to the pillar: its outline was most imposing. Upon reaching it, I found it to be a columnar structure, standing upon a pedestal, which is perhaps eighty feet high, and composed of loose white sandstone, having vast numbers of large blocks lying about in all directions. From the centre of the pedestal rises the pillar, composed also of the same kind of rock; at its top, and for twenty to thirty feet from its summit, the colour of the stone is red. The column itself must be seventy or eighty feet above the pedestal. It is split at the top into two points. There it stands, a vast monument of the geological periods that must have elapsed since the mountain ridge, of which it was formerly a part, was washed by the action of old Ocean's waves into mere sandhills at its feet. The stone is so friable that names can be cut in it to almost any depth with a pocket-knife: so loose, indeed, is it, that one almost feels alarmed lest it should fall while he is scratching at its base. In a small orifice or chamber of the pillar I discovered an opossum asleep, the first I had seen in this part of the country. We turned our backs upon this peculiar monument, and left it in its loneliness and its grandeur--"clothed in white sandstone, mystic, wonderful!" From hence we travelled nearly west, and in seventeen miles came to some very high sandhills, at whose feet the river swept. We followed round them to a convenient spot, and one where our horses could water without bogging. The bed of the Finke is the most boggy creek-channel I have ever met. As we had travelled several miles in the morning to the pillar, and camped eighteen beyond it, it was late in the afternoon when we encamped. The country we passed over was mostly scrubby sandhills, covered with porcupine grass. Where we struck the channel there was a long hole of brine. There was plenty of good grass on the river flat; and we got some tolerably good water where we fixed our camp. When we had finished our evening meal, the shades of night descended upon us, in this our first bivouac in the unknown interior. By observations of the bright stars Vega and Altair, I found my latitude was 24 degrees 52' 15"; the night was excessively cold, and by daylight next morning the thermometer had fallen to 18 degrees. Our blankets and packs were covered with a thick coating of ice; and tea left in our pannikins overnight had become solid cakes.