ach, to which a sandy plain, extending with a gentle rise to their
base, connects them. Its height, about four hundred feet, as well as the
material of which it is composed,--a light-colored friable
sandstone,--is about the same as the rest of the chain; but an inclined
plane of almost impalpable sand rises at an angle of forty degrees with
the horizon, and is bounded by a semi-circle of rocks, presenting
broken, abrupt, and pinnacled forms, and extending to the base of this
remarkable hill. Although their shape and arrangement in some respects
may be said to resemble a whispering gallery, yet I determined by
experiment that their irregular surface renders them but ill adapted for
the production of an echo. Seated at a rock at the base of the sloping
eminence, I directed one of the Bedouins to ascend; and it was not until
he had reached some distance that I perceived the sand in motion,
rolling down the hill to the depth of a foot. It did not, however,
descend in one continued stream; but, as the Arab scrambled up, it
spread out laterally and upwards, until a considerable portion of the
surface was in motion. At their commencement the sounds might be
compared to the faint strains of an Aeolian harp when its strings first
catch the breeze: as the sand became more violently agitated by the
increased velocity of the descent, the noise more nearly resembled that
produced by drawing the moistened fingers over glass. As it reached the
base, the reverberations attained the loudness of distant thunder,
causing the rock on which we were seated to vibrate; and our
camels,--animals not easily frightened,--became so alarmed that it was
with difficulty their drivers could restrain them."

"The hill of _Reg-Rawan_ or the 'Moving Sand,'" says the late Sir
Alexander Burnes, by whom the place was visited in the autumn of 1837,
and who has recorded his visit in a brief paper, illustrated by a rude
lithographic view, in the "Journal of the Asiatic Society" for 1838, "is
about forty miles north of Cabul, towards Hindu-kush, and near the base
of the mountains." It rises to the height of about four hundred feet, in
an angle formed by the junction of two ridges of hills; and a sheet of
sand, "pure as that of the sea-shore," and which slopes in an angle of
forty degrees, reclines against it from base to summit. As represented
in the lithograph, there projects over the steep sandy slope on each
side, as in the "Mountain of the Bell," still steep