OCR Text |
Show 162 CARRIHGTOK ISLAND- HAT ISLAND. laminae. I searched diligently, bat could find no cubes free, although the rock was full of the small cavities from which they had either been dislodged or had decayed under the influence of the weather. Abundance of the slate can be procured free from this objection; and by trial I ascertained that a nail could be driven through the layers almost as easily as through a shingle. On the shores were large quantities of a deposite resembling hard clay, which had formed when soft upon the rolled stones of the beach, and, when hardened by the sun or other causes, had been broken off, retaining, like a hollow mould, the shape of the stone upon which it had been deposited. The island is surrounded by extensive shoals. The beach is gradually making to the south, and will doubtless join with the wide sand- flats to the south and west before many years. At sundown we returned to the beach, where we bivouacked on some soft sand, partially protected from the searching wind by a thick growth of grease- wood, which was abundant. Our fires were plentifully supplied from the drift- wood piled up on the shore. Wednesday, April 10.- Up by sunrise. Breakfast, cold fried bacon, roasted heron's eggs, and cold water. Morning cool- wind from east, afterward shifted to north- east and north. Started for a small island lying about five miles to the northward, to erect a station upon it. We found it be a mere islet, one hundred feet in height, and about a mile in circumference, having a long, narrow sand- spit running off from it in a south- east direction for a mile and a- half. It is merely a pile of granitic conglomerate, with tufa in large masses. Grease- wood seems to be the principal growth, and the whole island abounds in the wild onion, now vividly green, filling the air with its odour. Two species of cactus were also seen. A cliff of slate rock occurred, preserving to a certain extent its laminated structure, but so burned, altered, and filled with pebbles as to be useless. The water, for a long distance around this islet, is shallow, more especially to the westward. Having completed the station at this point, we returned to Fremont's Island to cover the station there with cloth, so as to render it visible from a distance. After a row of twelve miles we landed on the south- west beach at noon. The water crossed was at first quite shallow, but gradually deepened to eighteen, twenty- four, twenty- seven, and thirty- three feet, and then moderately shoaled to Fremont's Island, being eighteen feet deep within a hundred yards of the shore. |