44 Geographical Collectmis. 



in the wind, and its sea-green carpet broken by the more gaudy colours of a few 

 flowering plants, the viper's bugloss, the silver weed, or the violet. A walk 

 among those hillocks, on a summers afternoon, is lonely but beautiful ; the de- 

 parting beams gain a richer glow, playful rabbits start from every plot of 

 grass, and the disturbed pewitt flutters above, uttering cries of distress, and 

 sweeping, in half circles, to draw the stranger from its nest ; groups of grey 

 sanderlings course along the level sands, advancing at times into the slow moving 

 wave, now and then a solitary heron is seen, with wings that fold over its body 

 like a cloak, preying on the unwary fish, which its own radiant breast has brought'' 

 around. Cormorants stretch their long necks from occasional headlands, and 

 with an undetermined look wend a lazy flight across the ocean ; the male eider 

 whistles on its wing, followed by a brown uncomely mate, and, at intervals, the 

 plaintive note of the ibis-billed curlew is re-echoed along the coast. 



From the most westerly point, back again to the range of augitic rocks, the 

 shore bounds the inland bay in an hemispherical line, uniform and level. The 

 sands are here bare at less than half tide, and are covered with a pan of muddy 

 deposit, which is ploughed by innumerable sea worms. This pan is very trea- 

 cherous, as the sands are sometimes broken beneath, and the surface has been 

 known to give way. This, combined with the unseen channels, and very uniform 

 level of these shores by which the advance of the water is both rapid and unex- 

 pected, often gives rise to serious accidents, and to loss of lives and of proper- 

 ty. Not only are accidents occasioned by this disposition of the sands, by 

 which, but lately, three young women lost their lives, but the water eddying 

 round the reefs, in deep and rapid gullies, oftentimes in the very neighbourhood 

 of the shore, surrounds the traveller. We have heard of an individual who had 

 been thus deceived, treading over these desert sandy wastes, late in the evening, 

 a deep and dense fog had led him from the direct path, and after losing much 

 time, he had unexpectedly found himself surrounded on all sides by rushing 

 water, eddying in circles round the sands on which he stood ; unable to swim, 

 without any succour near, the calm and suUen waves seemed the moving inlets of 

 a dreadful abyss, and their deep heaving disclosed at every moment a sight of 

 his living grave; wave after wave, the water gradually advanced, encircled the 

 small space on which he stood, and soon washed his limbs, trembling in the 

 agony of an approaching death — but they had reached their height ; and, after 

 playing round their victim, they retired as they came, and the wanderer found him- 

 self relieved from his very singular situation. 



The passage which occurs between the greenstone rocks and the opposite sand 

 hills is from eight to fourteen fathoms deep, at high water, and the inhabitants of 

 the island are not at all anxious that this should get blocked up, as during hard 

 weather it affbrds one of the best and safest harbours for many miles along the 

 coast ; and thus, in cases of distress, vessels often put into this bay, and obtain 

 supplies from the villagers. 



Letter from M. Boblaye, Captain of Engineers in the French army in the Mo- 

 rea, to Baron de Ferussac. — Modon, \Qth September, 1829. 



The friendship with which you honour me, and the desire of placing the fruit 

 of my researches in hands which will render them useful to science, induced me, 

 on leaving home, to promise to reserve for you a great part of my collections. 

 While I expect to be able to fidfil my engagement, I am desirous of letting you 

 know what I am doing in geography and natural history. I should, above all, 

 wish to be able to send you news of Colonel Bory, but having been separated 

 from him since my arrival, for the purpose of devoting myself exclusively to geo- 

 desical operations, I have had few opportunities of seeing him. The joiirnals, I 

 presume, will in part make up for my silence. 



Permit me, then, to present a brief exposition of the object and result of my 

 principal researches. However imperfect they are, they cannot fail to be interest- 

 ing to you as a geographer and geologist. 



