— 19 -. 



beaaty so rapidly wlien cauglit, that to be truly appreciated, 

 they must be seen in their native element. 



Now and then a shark would show his ugly head, when the 

 rest disappeared as by magic ; the brute would look at me with 

 his bright eyes, and grin shewing his ghastly maw, as if in an- 

 ticipation of the meal he hoped to get out of me, if I should 

 slip over the ledge. 



About 200 yards from ours, was another cave, inaccessible 

 to man. The waves would rush into it for some distance, 

 when the confined air would force them back to the opening 

 with a thundering roar, and threw the water up in volumes 

 of spray for a hundred feet around. I thought as I watched 

 the foaming seething mass, that the Souffleur at Grrand Port 

 in its angriest moments could not be compared to this. 



At 7 a.m. the clouds dispersed, the sun shone out brilliantly, 

 and our skipper thought it safe after breakfast, to make an- 

 other excursion, of which permission I lost no time in availing 

 myself. 



This island is evidently formed by upheaval, from the bot- 

 tom of the ocean ; it is in fact a crater of upheaval or elevation 

 which formation lies in strata or laminated beds of friable 

 brownish sandstone. 



These beds are here found inclined all round the axis of the 

 cone, rising more and more from the base to the summit. 



In one of the fissures to the N.-E., immense numbers of 

 lines of stratification are distinctly seen, indicating the diffe- 

 rent periods at which they were formed. More than six 

 hundred feet from the surface, I observed pieces of detached 

 lava, imbedded in the sandstone, which is entirely sedimen- 

 tary deposit. For ages upon ages the formation of these beds 

 was going on, and layer on layer was piled up, almost every 

 one of which has a deposit of lava and scoria on its surface, 

 and these are well seen wherever opening or fissures occur. 



My opinion is that at the time of upheavals the whole mass 

 was in a plastic conglomerate state. This conclusion I have 

 arrived at from the peculiar undulating position in which the 

 stratified layers are found, and that is visible almost every- 

 where. 



