NEED OF EXPLORATION 171 A more recent mention of this pointing rock occurs in "A Trip to the Azores" by Borges de F. Henriques, a native of Flores. He says: Another natural curiosity which has been defaced by the weather and the bad taste of visitors is a rock resembling a horseman with the right arm extended to the westward as if pointing the way to the new world. Some insular writers deny the existence of this rock. 16 NEED OF EXPLORATION There seems still a good deal of vagueness about the matter, and Corvo might well be given a thorough overhauling for ves- tiges of ancient times. This naturally should be extended to the submerged area close to the shore, for the outlying reefs and ridges may mark the site of lower lands where human work once went on and where its traces and relics may remain. In expanse the island probably was not always what we find it now, six miles in length by at most three in breadth (seven square miles in all, as most accounts compute it) with fringes of rock running off from the shore, "lifting themselves high above the water in one place, blackening the surface in another, and again sinking to such a depth that the waves only eddy and bubble over them." Mr. Henriques says elsewhere: "In many of the islands, but especially in Flores, there are vestiges clearly indicating that formerly as well as lately parts of the island have sunk or rather disappeared in the sea." He cites for instance a notable loss of land in the summer of 1847. There is reason to believe that Corvo has dwindled in this way much more, proportionately, than Flores. One striking indica- tion is found in the comparison of the present map with those of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For convenience sketches of these are appended (Fig. 23). The relative position of the is- lands is about the same in all. The form of Corvo varies from the pear shape of the Laurenziano map (i35i), 17 and another shape 18 16 Borges de F. Henriques: A Trip to the Azores or Western Islands, Boston, 1867, pp. 35-36. 17 Theobald Fischer, Portfolio 5, PI. 4. 18 Idem, Portfolio 7, PI. 4.
