REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1901 29 



The following description by Hugh Miller is interesting, 

 and may be quoted here, though the Club, as a body, had 

 not the opportunity of visiting this peculiar feature of the 

 Eock. 



The Tunnel thromjh the Bass. 



" A fine natural niche, a full hundred feet in height — such 

 a one, perhaps, as that which Wordsworth apostrophises in 

 his Sonnets on the Eiver Duddon — forms the opening of the 

 cavern, the roof bristling high overhead with minute tufts 

 of a beautiful rock-fern, the basement course, if I may so 

 speak, roughened with brown algae, and having the dark green 

 sea for its floor. But the cavern beyond seems scarce worthy 

 of such a gateway ; the roof appears from this point to close 

 in upon it ; and a projection from one of the sides completely 

 shuts up its long vista to the sea and the daylight on the 

 other side of the island. The height of this tunnel of nature's 

 forming is about thirty feet throughout ; its length about 

 a hundred and seventy yards. Not far from its western 

 opening there occurs a beach of gravel, which, save when 

 the waves run high during the flood of spring tides, is rarely 

 covered. Its middle space contains a large pool, filled, even 

 at low ebb, with from three to four feet of water ; and an 

 accumulation of rude boulders occupies the remaining portion 

 of its length, a little within the eastern entrance. It is a 

 dark and dreary recess, full of chill airs and dropping damps 

 — such a cavern as that into which the famous Sinbad the 

 Sailor was lowered, at the command of his dear friend the 

 king, when he had to be buried alive, agreeably to the 

 courtesy of the country." — [Hugh Miller, "Geology of the 

 Bass," p. 85.] 



For those who stationed themselves on the grassy platform 

 at the cliffs' edge, the multitude of wings of restless fowl, 

 going and returning in wide circuits — gannets, gulls and 

 guillemots with their varied flight, the smaller puffins, and 

 the razor-bills on the shingle beneath — gave an air of bustle 

 and excitement to the place. The words of Hugh Miller 



