34 THE :SIAODALENE ISLANDS — PATTERSON. 



are very soft. So easily are they di.siiitegrated l)y the influence 

 of air and water that I have scraped two inches in thickness off 

 the seaward side of them. The sea is thus rapidly wearing 

 them away, but not them only. On the western side of Grind- 

 stone Island they are succeeded by harder rocks of the carboni- 

 ferous formation, which extend eastward and northward the 

 whole length of the group. These, which are mostly sandstones, 

 varying in hue from a light grey to a dark umbery brown, pre- 

 sent little more resistance to the power of the disintegrating 

 agencies at work. One cannot walk along the shore without 

 seeing how the clifts are falling down, and how the fragments 

 are being rolled and rubbed together and ground by the waves. 

 On the land one observes how it has become necessary that the 

 road alono- the bank should Ije removed farther inland, or how 

 fields are being graduallj^ diminished. Of the same process a 

 sadder evidence is to be found in the reefs and shoals, which ex- 

 tend from the shore in various directions, once the foundation of 

 the land, but now havino- the soil and so much of the rock 

 removed by the power of the waves that they form shallows 

 danp-erous to navigation. On the other hand from material thus 

 removed fiom the shore or brought down Ijy the rain, bogs and 

 saline marshes are being formed, and lagoons and bays filled up, 

 slowly if we reckon by human life, rapidly if we reckon by geo- 

 logical eras. Men not very old will show where they saw brigs 

 Ijuilt and loaded, where now you could easily wade across. And 

 your own eye can see how the sea is forming and broadening 

 beaches of gravel or sand, or the wind blowing it into hills. As 

 you walk along these beaches you see how soil is being gradually 

 formed upon them, and how they are becoming occupied by var- 

 ious kinds of vegetation. 



In this way in the inner reaches among the islands are formed 

 along their shores extensive tracts of marsh and swamp, inter- 

 sected by lagoons or shallow lakes, the larger of which it is said 

 once admitted vessels by channels which have since closed up. 



Much of these marshes could, with a little effort, be converted 

 into valuable meadow. They, as well as the sand beaches, are 

 covered with coarse grass which the inhaltitants cut for feeding 



