484 Capt. CARMICHAEL’s Description of 
of a truncated cone, rising abruptly from the sea, and ascending at 
an angle of 45 degrees to the height of three thousand feet. "This 
mass is surmounted by a dome upwards of five thousand feet high, 
on the summit of which is the craterof an old extinguished volcano. 
The island is of a circular form, and about nine leagues in cir- 
cumference. In various places the sea beats home against the 
salient angles of the mountain, rendering it impossible to walk 
round theisland. Between those points a narrow beach has been 
formed, by the gradual accumulation of the fragments of rock 
daily precipitated from above; and is covered in some few places 
with a layer of fine black sand resembling gunpowder, which 
is, however, kept in constant motion, being washed away by one 
gale, and cast up again by the next. 
‘The face of the mountain, as far ups the base of the dome, is 
mostly covered with brush-wood, intermixed with fern and long 
grass, which veil its native ruggedness. | In many parts, however, it 
is completely bare, and presents to view the edges of a vast num- 
ber of strata arranged horizontally, or at slight degrees of incli- 
nation. These strata are in-general from five to ten feet in thick- 
ness, and vary essentially in their internal structure. ‘The greater 
number are of solid rock, of a blueish-gray colour and extreme 
hardness, in some instances homogeneous, in others exhibiting 
* crystals of hornblende, felspar, and olivin sparingly scattered, or 
forming more than a moiety of the compound mass. Between 
those are frequently interposed beds of scoria cohering from the 
effect of partial fusion; of tufa studded with crystals of augite; 
or of ashes condensed by the pressure of the superincumbent 
mass. The latter, still retaining in a great measure their friable 
nature, moulder gradually away, and leave the more compact 
strata in projecting shelves. 
The 
