probable visit from these four-legged plunderers, and no one
disputed this.

After having turned the point, the settlers saw a long beach washed by
the open sea. It was then eight o'clock in the morning. The sky was very
clear, as it often is after prolonged cold; but warmed by their walk,
neither Harding nor his companions felt the sharpness of the atmosphere
too severely. Besides there was no wind, which made it much more
bearable. A brilliant sun, but without any calorific action, was just
issuing from the ocean. The sea was as tranquil and blue as that of a
Mediterranean gulf, when the sky is clear. Claw Cape, bent in the form
of a yataghan, tapered away nearly four miles to the southeast. To
the left the edge of the marsh was abruptly ended by a little point.
Certainly, in this part of Union Bay, which nothing sheltered from the
open sea, not even a sandbank, ships beaten by the east winds would
have found no shelter. They perceived by the tranquillity of the sea, in
which no shallows troubled the waters, by its uniform color, which was
stained by no yellow shades, by the absence of even a reef, that the
coast was steep and that the ocean there covered a deep abyss. Behind in
the west, but at a distance of four miles, rose the first trees of the
forests of the Far West. They might have believed themselves to be on
the desolate coast of some island in the Antarctic regions which the ice
had invaded. The colonists halted at this place for breakfast. A fire of
brushwood and dried seaweed was lighted, and Neb prepared the breakfast
of cold meat, to which he added some cups of Oswego tea.

While eating they looked around them. This part of Lincoln Island was
very sterile, and contrasted with all the western part. The reporter
was thus led to observe that if chance had thrown them at first on the
shore, they would have had but a deplorable idea of their future domain.

"I believe that we should not have been able to reach it," replied the
engineer, "for the sea is deep, and there is not a rock on which we
could have taken refuge. Before Granite House, at least, there were
sandbanks, an islet, which multiplied our chances of safety. Here,
nothing but the depths!"

"It is singular enough," remarked Spilett, "that this comparatively
small island should present such varied ground. This diversity of
aspect, logically only belongs to continents of a certain extent. One
would really say, that the western part of Lincoln Isla