Homfray Strait cuts off Báratáng Island from Middle Andaman, and joins the Andaman at its western mouth. It is intricate and rocky, but has good depths, except at the eastern entrance, where there is a broad bar of 8 feet. The tidal stream is weak, and the narrowest part is 60 yards across. The surface of Great Andaman is extremely irregular, and a central range of mountains runs from north to south, with an escarped face on the east, and a sloping declivity on the west, where marshy localities abound. The highest point is Saddle Hill (2400 feet) in North Andaman: Mount Harriet (1200 feet) stands on the north shore of Port Blair; and Ford's Peak, in Rutland Island, rises 1400 feet; while there are half a dozen unnamed summits with heights between 1000 feet and 1700 feet. Narkondam rises 2330 feet, from an oval-shaped base whose greatest diameter is 2 miles, and the crater walls of Barren Island, 2 square miles in area, attain an elevation of 1158 feet. Little Andaman, some 25 miles south of Rutland, 23 miles long and 17 miles wide, with an area of about 220 square miles, is, on the contrary, level throughout, and gradually rises to a height of 600 feet in the centre. None of the other islands save Rutland attain this elevation. Owing to its shape and conformation, there are no rivers and but few streams on Great Andaman, and during the dry season--January to April--there is some scarcity of water. Several creeks, however, are of sufficient depth to allow passage of boats for some distance into the interior. In the South Andaman the greater part of the drainage runs into the creeks, which ultimately leads off to the eastern shore, and in the North and Middle Andaman the bulk of the drainage seems to flow through gaps in the eastern range. Little Andaman is swampy in many parts, and possesses a few small creeks. On the western side, in which direction Great Andaman slopes gradually, banks of coral occur at distances of 20 and 25 miles from land. There are three of these, varying in length from 9 to 25 miles, all composed of dead coral and sand, with here and there single bunches of live coral 1 or 2 feet high. The water, which is so clear that on a calm day 8 or 9 fathoms looks like 20 feet, varies in its least depths from 3-3/4 to 6 fathoms, and, judged from the appearance of the bottom and the absence of reef-building coral, it seems probable that the surface _débris_ of the banks is disturbed by the send of the sea, and that the rollers topple and break on the middle bank in the south-west monsoon, though they may not do so on the others. This western coast is fully exposed to the south-west monsoon, and is by no means a desirable locality to be in at that season.