TERRACED BEACHES. 



129 



matted covering of curlew-berry or Empetrum. The 

 air was cold, chilly, reeking with the sea-drift, and the 

 gale buffeted my face as if a demon were trying to throw 

 me over the cliff, down to the sea-margin of former days. 



From the summit of the table the view was an inter- 

 esting one, though the atmosphere was very hazy. Belle 

 Isle was shut out of sight by a thin bank of fog or thick- 

 ened vapor which lay on the sea to the eastward. A few 

 miles up the shore was another cliff of basaltic columns, 

 the bases of the pillars wrapped in snow. There are in 

 this bay eleven sea-terraces which mark the former levels 

 of the sea, eight of which could be seen from the top of 

 this rock. On the west side the terraces slope towards 

 the north, while on Castle Island they slope towards the 

 southwest. The most distinct example of these terraced 

 sea-beaches lay at our feet, forming the western shore ot 

 Henley Island (on which the Devil's Dining Table is 

 situated). This magnificent beach rises 180 feet above 

 the sea-level, and when the sea covered it the waves 

 washed the base of the basaltic pillars, as indicated by 

 the debris of broken columns forming the talus at the 

 foot of the cliff on which I stood. This beach is com- 

 posed of three terraces, and the two lower ones widen 

 out into delta-like expansions on the northwest end of 

 the island, which are free from the usual covering of moss 

 and curlew-berry, and are so distinctly marked with 

 windrows of pebbles and gravel that it would seem as 

 if they had been but yesterday thrown up by the waves. 



Greville's Fort*, as we may name it, the ruins of which 



* According to a writer in Harper's Magazine for May, 1864, who describes 

 this fort and gives a plan of it, the fortifications were, supposed to have been 



