Towards nine o'clock the valley began to be particularly interesting, for its fantastic forms were more and more numerous; every moment, as we proceeded along, new white fairy-like castles appeared, and a painter who had leisure might fill whole volumes with these original landscapes. As proofs of this we may refer to some of these figures, which Mr. Bodmer sketched very accurately.[62] In many places the clay formed the summits of the hills; in these parts there were patches of _Juniperus repens_, and on the bank of the river, small and narrow strips covered with artemisia and the thorn with flesh-coloured leaves (_Sarcobatus nees_). Long tracts of the sand-stone strata perfectly resembled a large blown-up fortress, because the stratification everywhere gave these walls a certain regularity, while, at the same time, they bore marks of having been destroyed by violence. In several places where the sand-stone summit appeared plainly to represent an ancient knight's castle, another remarkable rock was seen to traverse the mountain in narrow perpendicular strata, like regularly built walls. These walls consist of a blackish-brown rock, in the mass of which large olive-green crystals are disseminated.[63] They run in a perfectly straight line from the summits of the mountain to the foot, appearing to form the outworks of the old castles.[64] The surface is divided by rents or furrows into pretty regular cubic figures like bricks, which renders their similarity to a work of art still more complete. The breadth of these perpendicular strata seldom exceeds one or two feet. One of these walls was particularly striking, which ran, without interruption, over the tops of three mountains, and through the clefts between them, and connected the three masses of white sand-stone on the summits in so regular a manner, that one could hardly fancy they were natural, but that they were a work of art. All these eminences are inhabited by numerous { 237} troops of the wild mountain sheep, of which we often saw thirty or fifty at a time climbing and springing over the sand-stone formation. These harmless animals often stood on a lofty peak, far beyond the reach of our rifles, while the outlines of their forms were clearly defined against the bright blue sky. As we passed a hollow lateral valley, we were shown the place at which the hunters of the keel-boat had, last year, hemmed in a whole herd of these animals in such a manner that not one escaped.