THE SPOUT-HOLES. 321 



wall ; and its base is separated from the area where 

 you stand, by a long but narrow fissure, through 

 which the sea rushes and recedes with every wave. 

 In the shadow of this great wall of rock there are 

 several round deep basins, always full of water, 

 fringed with the finer sorts of sea-weeds, and empur- 

 pled all round their interior with the encrusting coral- 

 lines. If you go down at extreme ebb, in a low 

 spring-tide, you will see the whole of the surface of 

 rock, that is covered in ordinary tides, but now 

 exposed, tinged with the same reddish purple hue, 

 very pleasing to the eye; a colour derived in part 

 from the number of red and purple sea-weeds that 

 flourish at this level, but principally from the com- 

 mon coralline, not only in its free tufted state, 

 but also, and chiefly, m its form of a shelly crust, 

 that spreads like a lichen upon the surface of the 

 rock. 



At the extremity of the rocky wall, there are two 

 small holes in a ledge, which communicate with the 

 sea by funnel-shaped orifices. Through these the 

 sea spouts in an interesting manner. The wave 

 rushes in under the ledge with its hollow roar, and 

 dashes up forcibly beneath it. At the same instant 

 there issues from the first hole, which is only a nar- 

 row slit, a powerful jet of steam-like vapour, resem- 

 bling the rush from the waste-pipe of an engine. 

 This is the pioneer : the next instant a cloud of water 

 and foam shoots upward and outward from the 

 second hole with terrific force, and is thrown to a 

 distance of twenty or thirty feet. The regularity of 

 the succession, the suddenness of the outburst of 



