which the little creek, where the "Chancellor"
had been stranded, corresponded to the hollow place above the knuckle.
The tide at this time was low, and the ship now lay heeled over very
much to the starboard side, the few points of rock that emerged in the
extreme south of the reef plainly marking the narrow passage through
which she had been forced before she finally ran aground.

As soon as Andre had finished his sketch we descended by a slope as
gradual as that by which we had come up, and made our way towards the
west. We had not gone very far when a beautiful grotto, perfect as an
architectural structure, arrested our attention, M. Letourneur and Andre
who have visited the Hebrides, pronounced it to be a Fingal's cave
in miniature; a Gothic chapel that might form a fit vestibule for the
cathedral cave of Staffa. The basaltic rocks had cooled down into the
same regular concentric prisms; there was the same dark canopied
roof with its interstices filled up with its yellow lutings; the same
precision of outline in the prismatic angles, sharp as though chiselled
by a sculptor's hand; the same sonorous vibration of the air across the
basaltic rocks, of which the Gaelic poets have feigned that the harps of
the Fingal minstrelsy were made. But whereas at Staffa the floor of the
cave is always covered with a sheet of water, here the grotto was beyond
the reach of all but the highest waves, whilst the prismatic shafts
themselves formed quite a solid pavement.

After remaining nearly an hour in our newly-discovered grotto we
returned to the "Chancellor," and communicated the result of our
explorations to Curtis, who entered the island upon his chart by the
name that Andre Letourneur had proposed.

Since its discovery we have not permitted a day to pass without spending
some time in our Ham Rock grotto. Curtis has taken an opportunity of
visiting it, but he is too preoccupied with other matters to have much
interest to spare for the wonders of nature. Falsten, too, came once and
examined the character of the rocks, knocking and chipping them about
with all the mercilessness of a geologist. Mr. Kear would not trouble
himself to leave the ship; and although I asked his wife to join us in
one of our excursions she declined, upon the plea that the fatigue, as
well as the inconvenience of embarking in the boat, would be more than
she could bear.

Miss Herbey, only too thankful to escape even for an hour from her
capricious m