The pickaxe, in the sinewy arms of its owner, soon dislodged great cakes of the upper deposit and laid bare a stratum of olive-green clay, which was announced to be a fossil-bed.  Lumps of this clay being broken off and crumbled up, proved indeed rich in deposit.  They found sharks’ teeth, the edges still sharply serrated, firmly set in pieces of the jawbone,—­whales’ teeth,—­vertebrae of various species,—­fragments of bone, great and small,—­several species of shell-fish, among which chiefly abounded a kind called quahaug,—­and many nondescript fragments, not easily classified.  One of these was a little bone closely resembling the tibia of a child’s leg, and may have belonged to some antediluvian infant lost at sea, (if Noah’s ancestors were mariners,) or perhaps drowned in the Deluge,—­for Mr. F. quoted an eminent geologist who has visited the Vineyard, and who supposed these remains to have been brought here by that mighty Flood-tide.  Another savant, however, supposes the island to have been thrown up from the sea by volcanic action; and that the fossils, now imbedded in cliffs a hundred feet high, were once deposited upon the bed of the ocean.  There is certainly a great amount of conglomerate, which has evidently been fused by intense heat; and masses of rock, sea-pebbles, sand, and iron-ore are now as firmly integrated as a piece of granite.

However, the fossils came; here they certainly are; many of them perfect in form, and light and porous to the eye, but all hard and heavy as stone to the touch.  Teeth, which are considered the most valuable of all the remains, are sometimes found as wide as a man’s hand, and weighing several pounds; but Mysie was quite content with the more insignificant weight of those which filled her basket, especially when an immense reticulated paving-stone was added, which Mr. F. pronounced to be a whale’s vertebra.  She then was induced to trust the precious collection to Caleb’s care, the more willingly that the ascent of the cliffs was now to be attempted.  This was easily and quickly accomplished by Mr. F. and his little son, by going to the right spot before beginning to climb; but Mysie declaring that the ascent was quite practicable where they were, Caleb and Clarissa felt bound in honor to accompany her.  For some distance, all went very well,—­the face of the cliff presuming slight inequalities of surface, which answered for foot-and hand-holds, and not being very steep; but suddenly Mysie, the leader of the group, arriving within about three feet of the top, found the rock above her so smooth as to give no possible foothold by which she might reach the strong, coarse grass which nodded tauntingly to her over the brink.

Clinging closely to the face of the cliff, she turned her head to announce to Caleb that she could not go on, and, in turning, looked down.  Before this she had felt no fear, only perplexity; but the sight of those cruel rocks below,—­the hollow booming of the waves, as they lashed the foot of the cliff,—­the consciousness that a fall of a hundred feet awaited her, should she let go her hold,—­all this struck terror to Mysie’s heart; and while a heavy, confused noise came throbbing and ringing through her head, she shut her eyes, and fancied she had seen her last of earth.