1773.
May.
which we thought were likely to thrive in this place. We also climbed to the top of the ridge, which we found covered with dry grasses, intermixed with some low, shrubby plants; and among them a number of quails exactly like those of Europe, had their residence. Several deep and narrow glens which ran down the sides of the ridge to the sea, were filled with trees, shrubs, and climbers, the haunt of numerous small birds, and of several falcons; but where the cliffs were perpendicular, or hanging over the water, great flocks of a beautiful sort of shags, built their nests on every little broken rock, or if possible in small cavities about a foot square, which seemed in a few instances to be enlarged by the birds themselves. The argillaceous stone, of which most of the hills about Queen Charlotte's Sound consisted, is sometimes sufficiently soft for that purpose. It runs in oblique strata, commonly dipping a little towards the south, is of a greenish-grey, or bluish, or yellowish-brown colour, and sometimes contains veins of white quartz. A green talcous or nephritic stone, is also found in this kind of rock, and when very hard, capable of polish, and semi-transparent; it is used by the natives for chissels, hatchets, and sometimes for pattoo-pattoos: it is of the same species which jewellers call the jadde. Several softer sorts of this stone, perfectly opaque, and of a pale green colour, are more numerous than the flinty semi-transparent kind; and several species of horn-stone
