Facing the precipice, and separated from it by a strip of ground not twenty feet above the sea-level in the highest part, was another rock-built eminence, quite bare of trees, blackened by the weather and scarred in a manner that attested the attacks of lightning.
He whistled softly.

"By Jove!" he said.

"Volcanic, and highly mineralized." The intervening belt was sparsely dotted with trees, casuarinas, poon, and other woods he did not know, resembling ebony and cedar.

A number of stumps showed that the axe had been at work, but not recently.

He passed into the cleft and climbed a tree that offered easy access.