OF THE CLIFFS. 
339 
cliffs. The brown or upper portion consisted of an 
exceedingly hard, coarse grey limestone, among 
which some few shells were embedded, but which, 
from the hard nature of the rock, I could not break 
out ; the lower or white part consisted of a gritty 
chalk, full of broken shells and marine productions, 
and having a somewhat saline taste : parts of it 
exactly resembled the formation that I had found up 
to the north, among the fragments of table-land ; 
the chalk was soft and friable at the surface, and 
easily cut out with a tomahawk, it was traversed 
horizontally by strata of flint, ranging in depth from 
six to eighteen inches, and having varying thick- 
nesses of chalk between the several strata. The chalk 
had worn away from beneath the harder rock above, 
leaving the latter most frightfully overhanging and 
threatening instant annihilation to the intruder. 
Huge mis-shapen masses were lying with their 
rugged pinnacles above the water, in every direction 
at the foot of the cliffs, plainly indicated the frequency 
of a falling crag, and I felt quite a relief when my 
examination was completed, and I got away from so 
dangerous a post. 
I have remarked that the natives at the head of 
the Great Bight had intimated to us, that there 
were two places where water might be found in this 
neighbourhood, not far apart, and as with all our 
efforts we had only succeeded in discovering one, 
I concluded that the other must be a little further 
along the coast to the westward ; in this supposition 
z 2 
