Chap, v.] NIGHTINGALE ISLAND. IO9 



Peak. The lower ridge is covered with the grass on all except 

 its very summit, where, amongst huge irregularly piled boulders 

 of basalt, grow the same ferns as are found in Inaccessible 

 Island, and Phylica arborea trees. The summit of the higher 

 ridge appears to have a similar vegetation, the tussock ceasing 

 there. 



In the sea of tall grass, clothing the wide main valley of the 

 island on its south side, are patches of Phylica trees, growing 

 in many places thickly together, as at Inaccessible Island, with 

 a similar vegetation devoid of tussock, beneath them. The 

 appearance of the tall grass, when seen from a distance, is 

 most deceptive ; as we viewed the island from the deck of the 

 ship, about a quarter of a mile off, we saw a green coating of 

 grass, coming everywhere down to the verge of the wave-wash 

 on the rocks, and stretching up comparatively easy looking 

 slopes towards the summit of the Peak. 



The grass gave no impression of its height and impenetra- 

 bility, and one of the surveyors started off jauntily to go to 

 the top of the Peak and make a surveying station. On closer 

 inspection, however, the real state of the case might be inferred, 

 for there was plainly visible a dark sinuous line leading from 

 the sea, right inland through the thickest of the tussock. This 

 was a great penguin road, and the whole place was one vast 

 penguin rookery, and the grass that looked like turf to walk 

 on, was higher than a man's head. 



I made out with my glass a great drove of penguins on the 

 rocks under the termination of the road, and I went below at 

 once to put on my thickest gaiters. 



We pulled on shore through beds of kelp, and landed on 

 shelving rocks leading up to caves, the haunt of the Fur Seals 

 in the proper season. We met the surveyors coming back, 

 well pecked and dead beat, having given up the Peak in 

 despair. 



The shelving rock is composed of volcanic conglomerate, 

 full of irregular fragments and rounded lumps of hard basalt, 

 and various scoriaceous forms ; in places also of a similarly 

 derivative rock of a reddish colour, but devoid of larger em- 

 bedded fragments. In a cliff about forty feet in height, 

 adjoining and rising from the shelves, are beds of fine-grained 

 volcanic sandstone rock, banded yellow and black, and hori- 

 zontally bedded, probably of submarine formation. 



These beds constitute the whole mass of two or three small 

 outlying rocks or islands lying to the N.E., and are there also 

 horizontal. These beds appear about twenty feet thick in the 

 cHfif, and above them is a layer of basalt of about the same 

 thickness, which extends east and west, capping the softer 



