THE LACCADIVES AND THE WEST COAST. 419 
passed; steam was soon up, but it was nearly 2 hours more 
before our chief engineer aided by nine strong men and 3 enor- 
mous crowbars, succeeded in persuading the screw to revolve. 
At last, just when we were close on the rocks, off went the en- 
gines with a rush, we ran through the channel and were just 
coming round to our proposed anchorage when crack went 
something, and the engines came to dead stop. It appeared 
that the condensers air pump shaft had snapped in two, that 
there was no duplicate on board, and that the broken shaft could 
not be mended except in a dockyard. Further that as with 
the condenser and a pressure of 42 Ibs. the engines could hard- 
ly be moved, and as without the condenser, the boilers will only 
work up to 30 tbs., we may henceforth give up all idea of further 
utilizing our engines during the present trip. A cheerful 
prospect truly, considering the remarkable sailing capacities of 
the “ Clyde.” 
There was a slight sea on, but we soon had out a good cutter 
and started for the rocks. These consist of three outer and com- 
paratively large ones, on the outermost of which is placed a 
light house (distant about 4 miles from the nearest point of the 
mainland,) and a vast number of minor rocks running in a more 
or less broken line towards the coast. This line lies nearly 
north and south, and extends, northwards from the lighthouse, 
some nine miles to Sindeedroog or thereabouts. Through this line 
there is in one place a broad channel, about 2? miles from the 
shore, through which we came, and on a rock on the edge of 
which the ‘ Chaldea” was wrecked last year. 
The three large rocks, or rocky islands, are entirely meta- 
morphic, and are composed of numerous varieties of quartzo- 
micaceous rock, mostly more or less ferruginous, and in many 
places a good deal decomposed and broken up. 
The rocks are quite bare, but the crevices everywhere, and 
some few smooth places near their summits, (the highest is fully 
140 feet high), were filled and covered with quantities of a 
coarse tangled jointed grass, a species of Cymbopogon, which, 
with the exception of a few tufts of the Silver-scaled Amaranth 
(Celosia argentea, L.) and a trailing Clove-wort (MJollugo 
spergula, L.), constitutes their sole vegetation. 
The largest of the three is pierced from side to side by a huge 
tunnel-like cave, and about the middle of the island a shaft has 
broken down into this owing to the falling in of the roof. This cave 
is tenanted by numbers of Blue-rock Pigeons (C. intermedia), 
which gave us rather pretty shooting, the birds flashing out from 
the ends of the cave in rapid succession, when Rocks were thrown 
in through the shaft. Unfortunately the birds were easier to 
shoot than to retrieve, and whilst one that dropped a little distance 
