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The outline of the indented shores of the two main islands, and the relative positions of the smaller islets, accord with the strike both of the main axes of elevation and of the cleavage of the clay- slate. My notes on the geology of this country are copious, but as they are unimportant, and as fossils were found only in one district, a brief sketch will be here sufficient.
In the Chagos group there are some ordinary atolls, some annular reefs rising to the surface but without any islets on them, and some atoll-formed banks, either quite submerged, or nearly so. Its longest axis is ninety nautical miles, and another line drawn at right angles to the first, across the broadest part, is seventy.
Then, as there was no sign of Mother Martha, or any other pilot, they hung out the four lamps upon the starboard side, and, with a flapping sail, drifted on gradually, till at length they reached the mouth of the great mere, an infinite waste of waters deep in some places, shallow in others, and spotted everywhere with islets.
The other set looked across the Riva, and its double row of palms, out upon the bay, with its anchored ships, its fishing-boats, its encircling olive-covered hills, dotted high and low by villages and villas, and its embosomed Islets, Isola Nobile, Isola Fratello, Isola Sorella, the whole wide prospect glowing in the sun.
The sun had disappeared, but the effect of its rays was still apparent on the western horizon, where the heavens were washed with alternate streaks of gold and red and pink the colour of each streak excessively brilliant in the centre, but paling towards the edges. Here and there were golden, pink-tipped clouds and crimson islets surrounded with seas of softest blue.
The longboat had by this time drawn close in with the land, the island of Baru looming up black and clear-cut to windward, with the islets and their adjacent reef, now known as Rosario Islands, a short quarter of a mile broad on the weather bow, and a clump of hills on the main beyond, just beginning to outline themselves sharply against the lightening sky behind them.
Another day he wakes up at Sorrento and thinks he will visit the Siren Islets. He crosses the ridge and descends to the sea on the other side, to the so-called Scaricatojo quite a respectable walk, as any one can find out for himself.
For here, in these tiny pieces of earth, surrounded by thousands of miles of sea, the nearest land a group of islets like unto them, is found the gigantic tortoise, and in only one other place in the wide world, the Galapagos group of islands in the South Pacific.
In various places lofty precipices rise abruptly from the water's edge; throughout most of its extent the shore line is rock-bound and studded with islets. A more picturesque route, and one abounding in the grandest and most stupendous scenery in the world, is that from the Pacific by way of Smyth Channel, the entrance to which is four hundred miles north of the entrance to Magellan Strait.
It was like the beating of a distant sea, with a ground swell presaging storm. The wind, blowing from the south, brought, too, the voice of the river, passionate over its myriad rocks, around its thousand islets. There were odours of flowers; somewhere there was jasmine. White moths came in at the window, and Judith, rising, put glass candle-shades over the candles.
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