RILEY*S NARRATIVE. 491 
than perish. The mariners, with heavy hearts, 
admitted the force of this reasoning, and the 
vessel was turned towards the coast. It was 
the 7th, however, before they arrived at a pro- 
montory, which they afterwards found to be Cape 
Barbas, a little to the north of Cape Blanco. The 
shore was here lined with a face of perpendicular 
and broken cliffs, where they in vain attempted to 
find an ascent. They searched for four miles along 
the foot of the w all of rock, and were at length 
obliged to spend the night on the sand. Next 
morning they rose somewhat refreshed, and Riley 
came to a spot which seemed to afford a perilous 
possibility of ascent* There, " clinging for life" 
to the loose rocks, he scrambled from steep to 
steep, till, by a tedious path, he at length reached 
the summit of the cliff. But what was his horror, 
when he beheld before him an immeasurable plain, 
H without a tree, shrub, or spear of grass, that 
c< could give the smallest relief to expiring nature.' * 
He fell senseless to the ground, and was some 
time before he regained the full possession of con- 
sciousness. His companions, who were far be- 
hind, though previously warned, experienced a si- 
milar shock at the first view of this expanse of de- 
solation. They fell to the earth, exclaiming, 
" *Tis enough ! here we must breathe our last." 
Riley, however, after the first shock was over, en- 
couraged them still to hope, and led them on along 
