Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/149

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Chap. IV.]
GEOLOGICAL NOTICE.
75
1840

places it is exposed to a much greater extent. No remains of leaves could be discovered in it, although the wood occurs in the basalt near it.

"The 'Arched Rock' at the entrance to the harbour terminates this ridge to the southward. It is about 150 feet high, the base of the arch 100 feet across, and is composed of the same kind of basaltic rock. Several fragments of wood, much twisted, softer, and more recent in appearance than the hard silicified wood above described, occur enclosed in the basalt in the inside of the 'arch.'

"In the small bay inside of 'Arched Point,' a bed of coal, four feet thick and forty feet in length, appears above the debris, thirty feet above the sea, and covered by basalt, which rises about 500 feet above it. The coal is slaty, of a brownish-black colour, and the fracture like wood coal: the bed takes a northerly direction.

"On the north side of the harbour, near the centre of the small bay formed by Cape François, a thin vein of coal, not more than two or three inches in thickness, again makes its appearance in a cave excavated in the shale. The coal is covered by a kind of 'slag,' and underlies the shale, above which the basalt rises to about the same height as on the south side of the harbour. The cave is thirty feet wide at the entrance, twenty feet deep, and twelve feet in height.

"From the centre of the terraced ridge terminating in Cape François rises a conical hill, its crater-shaped summit being 1200 feet above the level of the sea. A shallow lake (covered with ice