So
Having Laid The Schooner Right Under The Cliff, And
Putting Into The Gig Our Own Discarded Figure-Head, A
White ensign, a flag-staff; and a tin biscuit-box,
containing a paper on which I had hastily written the
Schooner's name, the date of her arrival, and the names
of all those who sailed on board, - we pulled ashore. A
ribbon of beach not more than fifteen yards wide, composed
of iron-sand, augite, and pyroxene, running along under
the basaltic precipice - upwards of a thousand feet
high - which serves as a kind of plinth to the mountain,
was the only standing room this part of the coast afforded.
With considerable difficulty, and after a good hour's
climb, we succeeded in dragging the figure-head we had
brought ashore with us, up a sloping patch of snow, which
lay in a crevice of the cliff, and thence a little higher,
to a natural pedestal formed by a broken shaft of rock;
where - after having tied the tin box round her neck,
and duly planted the white ensign of St. George beside
her, - we left the superseded damsel, somewhat grimly
smiling across the frozen ocean at her feet, until some
Bacchus of a bear should come to relieve the loneliness
of my wooden Ariadne.
On descending to the water's edge, we walked some little
distance along the beach without observing anything very
remarkable, unless it were the network of vertical and
horizontal dikes of basalt which shot in every direction
through the scoriae and conglomerate of which the cliff
seemed to be composed.
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