484 Capi. Carmichael's Description of 



of a truncated cone, rising abruptly from the sea, and ascending at 

 an ansle of 45 deirrees to the heifjht 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 the island. Between those points a narrow beach has been 

 formed, by the gradual accumulation of the fragments of rock 

 dail^' 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. 



'J'he face of the mountain, as far up as the base of the dome, is 

 mostly covered with brush-wood, intermixed with fern and long 

 grass, which veil its native rugged ness. 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 



