﻿280 POINT KEATS. August, 



successive cliffs like stairs, and attain a height of 

 two hundred and fifty feet a short way from the 

 beach. At a small point lying between the one 

 just named, and Point Keats, there are magnificent 

 columns of basalt with a pillar of the same material 

 rising out of the water immediately in front of 

 them. The bay to the south of these columns is 

 lined with cliffs of flesh-coloured limestone ; thin 

 layers of sandstone crop out further to the east- 

 ward, and covering them there is an overflow of 

 dark leek-green basalt or greenstone. 



A strong head-wind having sprung up and oc- 

 casioning much fatigue to the rowers, while our 

 progress was small, we put in at Point Keats, and 

 encamped. Mr. Rae and Albert went to hunt 

 rein-deer, and I took a short walk inland. 1 soon 

 came to extensive beds of flesh-coloured sandstone, 

 forming the bounding walls of a deep narrow ravine, 

 through which flowed a small shallow river varying 

 in width from ten to thirty yards, but whose chan- 

 nel bore evidence of a considerable body of water 

 passing through it in the spring floods. The ridges 

 of sandstone seem to have a direction from west- 

 north-west to cast-south-east, or nearly parallel to 

 the general coast-line here, and are much fissured, 

 the principal fissures being in the line of the strike. 

 The cliffs for the most part face westerly, and the 

 west wall of the ravine is lower than the eastern 



