--of a kind that is new to me, namely the C.
Decaisneana--are occasionally met. (These trees have almost a
palm-like appearance, and look like huge mops; but they grow in the
driest regions.) On our route Mr. Carmichael brought to me a most
peculiar little lizard, a true native of the soil; its colour was a
yellowish-green; it was armed, or ornamented, at points and joints,
with spines, in a row along its back, sides, and legs; these were
curved, and almost sharp; on the back of its neck was a thick knotty
lump, with a spine at each side, by which I lifted it; its tail was
armed with spines to the point, and was of proportional length to its
body. The lizard was about eight inches in length. Naturalists have
christened this harmless little chameleon the Moloch horridus. I put
the little creature in a pouch, and intended to preserve it, but it
managed to crawl out of its receptacle, and dropped again to its
native sand. I had one of these lizards, as a pet, for months in
Melbourne. It was finally trodden on and died. It used to eat sugar.

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