Scarcely had he completed the outline when
his father exclaimed,--
"Why, Andre, you have drawn a ham!"
"Something uncommonly like it, I confess," replied Andre. "I
think we had better ask Captain Curtis to let us call our island
Ham Rock."
"Good," said I; "though sailors will need to keep it at a
respectful distance, for they will scarcely find that their teeth
are strong enough to tackle with it."
M. Letourneur was quite correct; the outline of the reef as it
stood clearly defined against the deep green water resembled
nothing so much, as a fine York ham, of which the little creek,
where the "Chancellor" had been stranded, corresponded to the
hollow place above the knuckle. The tide at this time was low,
and the ship now lay heeled over very much to the starboard side,
the few points of rock that emerged in the extreme south of the
reef plainly marking the narrow passage through which she had
been forced before she finally ran aground.
As soon as Andre had finished his sketch we descended by a slope
as gradual as that by which we had come up, and made our way
towards the west. We had not gone very far when a beautiful
grotto, perfect as an architectural structure, arrested our
attention, M. Letourneur and Andre who have visited the Hebrides,
pronounced it to be a Fingal's cave in miniature; a Gothic chapel
that might form a fit vestibule for the cathedral cave of Staffa.
The basaltic rocks had cooled down into the same regular
concentric prisms; there was the same dark canopied roof with its
interstices filled up with its yellow lutings; the same precision
of outline in the prismatic angles, sharp as though chiselled by
a sculptor's hand; the same sonorous vibration of the air across
the basaltic rocks, of which the Gaelic poets have feigned that
the harps of the Fingal minstrelsy were made.
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