Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 1.djvu/319

Between the Archipelagos.]

jointed; the joints being of an uniform thickness, and nearly as broad as long. These fibres were generally of unequal length, and the extremities of the compound particle thence appeared somewhat torn. The particles exhibited no motion when in salt water; and the sole effect produced by immersing them in spirit of wine was the separation of each into its component fibres.

Until daybreak next morning the wind was unfavourable; but it then veered round to the south, and enabled us to pass Point Culver. Our situation at noon, and the bearings taken were these: Our course along the shore was so favoured by the wind, that at seven in the evening we had passed another projecting part of the cliffs, named, distant from Point Culver fifty miles; and the extreme in sight a-head was twenty miles further, and still cliffy. The nearest part was two or three leagues distant; and the wind being still at south, we hauled up to it, and at nine o'clock stood back to the westward.

The elevation of these cliffs appeared to be about five-hundred feet, and nothing of the back country was seen above them. In the upper part they are brown, in the lower part nearly white, and the two strata, as also the small layers of which each is composed, are nearly horizontal. They were judged to be calcareous, as was the white, grey, and brown sand which the lead brought up when the bottom was not of coral.

A surveyor finds almost no object here whose bearing can be set a second time. Each small projection presents the appearance of a steep cape, as it opens out in sailing along; but before the ship arrives abreast of it, it is lost in the general uniformity of the coast, and the latitude, longitude, and distance of the