Thoroughly exhausted by our exertions, we made the best of our way back to the platform, and throwing ourselves upon the bed of leaves, slept sweetly and soundly for some hours.
For several days after this fruitless search we were occupied in exploring every part of the summit of the hill, in order to inform ourselves of its actual resources.

We found that it would afford us no food, with the exception of the unwholesome filberts, and a rank species of scurvy grass, which grew in a little patch of not more than four rods square, and would be soon exhausted.

On the fifteenth of February, as near as I can remember, there was not a blade of this left, and the nuts were growing scarce; our situation, therefore, could hardly be more lamentable.

{*5} On the sixteenth we again went round the walls of our prison, in hope of finding some avenue of escape; but to no purpose.
We also descended the chasm in which we had been overwhelmed, with the faint expectation of discovering, through this channel, some opening to the main ravine.

Here, too, we were disappointed, although we found and brought up with us a musket.
On the seventeenth we set out with the determination of examining more thoroughly the chasm of black granite into which we had made our way in the first search.