Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/292

 turbed tenants of this natural monument; all its jutting points and little projections were covered with their white dung, and it seemed to me a wonderful effort of Nature, which had placed this mass in the position which it held, in spite of the utmost efforts of the winds, and waves of the wide ocean.

Another curious phenomenon appeared at the other end of the cove. The lava had poured down into the sea, and formed a stratum; a second river of fused rock had poured again over the first, and had cooled so rapidly as to hang suspended, not having joined the former strata, but leaving a vacuum between for the water to fill up. The sea dashed violently between the two beds, and spouted magnificently through holes in the upper bed of lava to the height of sixty feet, resembling much the spouting of a whale, but with a noise and force infinitely greater. The sound indeed was tremendous, hollow, and awful. I could not help