offing of about a mile, as this
would enable him not only to get a very good general idea of the island
as a whole, but would also enable him to carefully examine the
coast-line.

The easternmost extremity of the island--between which and the barrier
reef the deep-water passage lay--was a bold headland thickly overgrown
with tall and stately forest trees, and terminating in a rocky cliff
about one hundred and fifty feet high, that dipped sheer down into the
sea; and beyond this, to the northward, the coast-line curved inward
somewhat to the most northerly point on the island, forming what might
almost be termed a shallow bay--shallow, that is to say, in point of
depth of itself, but not of its depth of water, for the whole
north-easterly coast-line of the island consisted of precipitous cliffs
averaging about a hundred feet in height, with water enough alongside to
float the biggest ship that was ever launched, if one might judge from
its colour. There was no sign or possibility of a beach anywhere along
here, which was comforting to Leslie, whose mind somehow still clung
rather tenaciously to the idea of possible savages. But nothing mortal
could by any possibility land on that eastern seaboard, nor would
savages be likely to establish themselves in a spot so completely
inaccessible from the sea. Moreover, the entire country, from the ridge
or backbone of the island, that ran from the crater down to the most
northerly point of the island, was densely covered with vegetation,
showing no faintest sign of clearing or cultivation, so that Leslie
began once more to feel reassured.

The most northerly point of the island was reached and rounded in some
forty minutes from the moment of leaving the lagoon and bearing away
round Cape Flora--as Dick insisted on naming the bold headland that
formed the eastern extremity of the island. This most northerly point
was, like the other, a lofty vertical cliff, timber--crowned to its very
verge and descending vertically into the sea; and Flora declared that
the only possible designation for it was Point Richard.

Rounding Point Richard, then, and hauling in the mainsheet, the voyagers
found themselves suddenly under the lee of the land and in smooth water,
save for the long undulations of swell that came sweeping up to them
from the southward. They were now coasting down the western side of the
island; and here again Leslie was gratified to discover that the
conclusions arrived