CORMORANT ROCK. 



CORMORANT ROCK is situated one mile south from the most 

 southeasterly point of the Island of Rhode Island. This jagged 

 mass of weathered granite is about an acre in extent and rises 

 some twenty-five feet above the level of the ocean. The 

 highest point is nearest the northerly side, and the southerly 

 exposure is broader and somewhat flattened. Separated from 

 the larger rock by a deep, narrow channel, is another rock about 

 one fifteenth as large, but nearly as high. Opening to the north- 

 west, on the northerly side of the greater rock, is a small cove, 

 filled with boulders, which is partly encircled by an arm of the 

 rock that makes out to the north and west. It is only in this 

 cove that a landing can be made with safety in smooth weather, 

 for the ocean swell is constantly surging around the other sides 

 in a foreboding manner. No land vegetation ever grows on this 

 lonely rock, for whatever soil collects on the higher portions, 

 through the disintegration of the rock or the deposits made upon 

 it by birds, is swept away during heavy storms when the waves 

 make a clean sweep of the rocks. The average rise and fall of 

 the tide at this point is four feet, and the land around the rock, 

 below the high tide line, is covered with a luxuriant growth 

 of slimy ooze, rockweed (Fitciis) muscles, and barnacles. 



Looking at the rock from a geologist's point of view, it is of 

 igneous origin, being composed throughout of gray granite of a 

 coarse crystalline structure and well seamed with cleavage planes 

 that divide it up in more or less regular parallelepipeds of varying 

 size, from a few cubic inches to as many cubic yards. The 

 rock rises abruptly in ten fathoms of water from a hard bottom, 

 and forms a line with outcroppings of similar rocks that occur on 

 Sakonnet Point and the southwesterly part of the Island of 

 Rhode Island. The mesa top of the rock always presents a whit- 

 ish appearance, which is owing to the lime deposited there by 

 the birds that roost on its summit. This lime has penetrated 



