All these events gave me much concern, not only because the natives may be induced to attack and take revenge upon strangers who may subsequently pass this way, but also because they must have imbibed a very poor idea of the effect of our arms, when so many muskets were fired without doing them any mischief:  and, but for the sake of humanity, I could almost have wished that one had been killed.

The day after we arrived here, a boat from the San Antonio conveyed Mr. Montgomery and Mr. Cunningham to Clack’s Island.  The reef abounded with shells, of which they brought back a large collection, but not in any great variety; an indifferent cypraea was the most common; but there were also some volutae and other shells, besides trepang and asteriae, in abundance.  Mr. Cunningham observed a singularly curious cavern upon the rock, of which he gave me a description in the following account of the island: 

“The south and south-eastern extremes of Clack’s Island presented a steep, rocky bluff, thinly covered with small trees.  I ascended the steep head, which rose to an elevation of a hundred and eighty feet above the sea.  I found simply the plants of the main, namely, Mimusops parvifolia, Br.; Hoya nivea, Cunningham manuscript; Acacia plectocarpa, Cunningham manuscript; Chionanthus axillaris, Br.; Notelaea punctata, Br.; some alyxiae, and the small orange-fruited ficus, which grew in the thickets, and, by insinuating its roots in the interstices of the rocks, clothed a great portion of the inaccessible front of the island.

“The remarkable structure of the geological feature of this islet led me to examine the south-east part, which was the most exposed to the weather, and where the disposition of the strata was of course more plainly developed.  The base is a coarse, granular, siliceous sandstone, in which large pebbles of quartz and jasper are embedded:  this stratum continues for sixteen to twenty feet above the water:  for the next ten feet there is a horizontal stratum of black schistose rock, which was of so soft a consistence, that the weather had excavated several tiers of galleries; upon the roof and sides of which some curious drawings were observed, which deserve to be particularly described:  they were executed upon a ground of red ochre (rubbed on the black schistus) and were delineated by dots of a white argillaceous earth, which had been worked up into a paste.  They represented tolerable figures of sharks, porpoises, turtles, lizards (of which I saw several small ones among the rocks) trepang, star-fish, clubs, canoes, water-gourds, and some quadrupeds, which were probably intended to represent kangaroos and dogs.  The figures, besides being outlined by the dots, were decorated all over with the same pigment in dotted transverse belts.  Tracing a gallery round to windward, it brought me to a commodious cave, or recess, overhung by a portion of the schistus, sufficiently large to shelter twenty natives, whose recent fireplaces appeared on the projecting area of the cave.