Bass endeavoured to investigate the cause of this
deposit, by examining the form of the neighbouring parts of the island.
The result of his inquiries and conjectures amounted to this: that as
traces of the sea, and of the effects of running waters, were plainly
discernible in many parts of the island, and more particularly in the
vicinity of this deposit of chalk and granite, it seemed highly probable
that it had been formed by two streams of the tide, which, when the
island was yet beneath the surface of the sea, having swept round a large
lump of rocks, then met and formed an eddy, where every substance would
fall to the bottom. The lump of rocks is now a rocky knoll, which runs
tapering from the opposite side of the island toward the chalk. On each
side of it is a gap, through which the two streams appear to have passed.
The vegetation on the island seems brown and starved. It consists of a
few stunted trees; several patches of brush, close set and almost
impenetrable; large tufts of sour and wiry grass, and abundance of low
saltish plants, chiefly of the creeping kind.
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