At last their conduct became unbearable, and our patience worn out, so we got up, seized two sticks, and slaughtered some fifty of them. Then we had a little rest, for the others left us alone for a while and devoured their dead brethren, making a merry crackling noise all round us, as they pulled the joints asunder and opened the shells. It was, as the doctor remarked, like the sound of many lobster suppers going on together at Scott’s.
At daybreak (Nov. 22) we started for Southwest Bay. We had drunk all our water, and so were anxious to reach the bay, explore it, and be back to our stream as quickly as possible. While making this same journey nine years before, I had found no signs of fresh water between this and South Point. The streams that flow from the mountain-tops are absorbed far up by the slopes of debris and never reach the shore. Mr. A⸺ did discover a small, but uncertain, supply near his camp at the head of Southwest Bay, but we felt that we could not rely on this, and that the issue in the ravine above us, which we had left on the previous evening, was the only one we could fall back upon with certainty on the whole weather shore of the island.
We walked along the sandy beach, with the mountains towering to the right of us and the ocean swell breaking heavily on the reefs to our left. The beach was covered with wreckage—planks, barrels, spars, timbers of vessels with the corroded iron bolts still sticking in them—a melancholy spectacle; but I was unable to find one particular wreck which I had seen here nine years before—the complete framework of a vessel partly buried in the sands, into which I had thought it might be worth while for our party now to dig, as some valuables might be lying in her hold. Either the sea had broken up or the sands had completely covered this wreck since my last visit.
We found traces of turtle on the sands, and we saw that the pools of clear water left by the tide were full of fish, while sea-crabs scampered over the rocks in quantities. The beans, too, grew in profusion on the downs above the beach, so there was plenty of food all round us, and, if there had only been fresh water, we could have made ourselves very comfortable here. There were, of course, plenty of land-crabs everywhere, but one would have to be hard driven to eat these ugly brutes.
At last we came to a promontory of rock jutting out into the sea. We climbed up this without difficulty, and descended the other side by a steep slope of soft white sand.
From here we could see before us the Sugarloaf and Noah’s Ark. The former mountain, as its name implies, is of conical shape—a stupendous mass, apparently of grey granite, whose summit is about 1,500 feet above the sea, and which on one side is very nearly perpendicular. Noah’s Ark (South Point on the Admiralty chart) was so named by myself at the time of my former visit, in consequence of its resemblance both in shape and colour to the favourite toy of my childhood. It is of oblong form, with perpendicular sides and with a top exactly like the roof of a house. It is formed of volcanic rock of a peculiar reddish colour, and is about 800 feet in height. These two strangely-shaped mountains are joined together by an apparently inaccessible ridge composed chiefly of the red detritus from Noah’s Ark.
Our destination, Southwest Bay, is bounded on its east side by these mountains; it was, therefore, necessary for us now, being south of East Point, to cross the intervening heights.
The only pass I knew was just under the Sugarloaf. This we used generally to speak of as the Sugarloaf Col, so as to distinguish it from another pass which we afterwards discovered. Sugarloaf Col is the gap which divides the Sugarloaf from a jagged peak to the north of it, and which, in its turn, is continued by the steep downs which lie to the back of Southwest Bay.
We crossed the sands, and then a small plain covered with a variety of bushes, which brought us to the foot of the Col. This gap is formed of rocks piled on one another, and is not difficult to surmount.
We reached the summit of it and then, looking down on the other side, we beheld, lying at our feet, Treasure Bay at last.
XII
We Explore the Ravine
As we stood on the Col, the steep wall of the Sugarloaf rising to the left of us, the view over Southwest Bay was exceedingly fine. The bay is of semicircular form, with a distance of about a mile and a half from point to point. Broad sands, with green downs behind them, border the central portion; but it is bounded by steep bare mountains on either side: on the east side by Noah’s Ark, the Sugarloaf and the peaks beyond; and on the west side by the rugged promontories and islands which divide it from South Bay. In contrast to the savage cliffs that shut them in, the sands and downs in the middle of the bay present a very pleasing and fertile appearance, especially when seen from the sea, conveying the idea that this is a far more agreeable spot to live on than proves to be the case
