Sails were soon stowed and we rowed off to reconnoitre the gap, which is the only practicable landing-place; everywhere else the land slopes steeply to the sea. To the south a heavy swell was breaking on the shore, but in the little cove formed here the sea was perfectly calm, and so clear that as we passed into shallower water the coral bottom, 10 fathoms down, was plainly visible. A rough wall of lava about a dozen feet high stretches across the opening, and to the left of this, among the stones and boulders of the shore, we found, below high-water mark, a little stream of fresh water trickling to the sea; it is the only water on the island, and at that time was at a temperature of 97.5° F.[6] The only inhabitants of any size that the island can boast of are a large herd of goats, whose well-worn tracks show plainly on every slope and cliff. A score of these animals, left in 1891 by the station steamer from Port Blair, have so thriven that their descendants must now be numbered in hundreds, and are so free from fear, and unsuspicious, that had we needed them we could have butchered any quantity. From the landing-place the ground slopes gently upward to the floor of the crater, which is about 50 feet above sea level. In the centre of this rises the little cone of slightly truncated form. Symmetrical in outline, 1000 feet high and perhaps 2000 feet in diameter at the base, there is nothing it reminds one of more closely than a huge heap of purplish-black coal-dust, with patches and streaks of brown on the top. To right and left of the base, and thence towards the sea, flows a broad black stream of clinkery lava, the masses of which it is composed varying in dimensions from rugged blocks of scoriæ a ton or more in weight to pieces the size of one's fist. The journey across it would be one of some difficulty, were it not that the goats, coming from all parts of the island in their need for water, by constantly travelling to and fro in the same line, have worn a smooth and deep path from side to side, some 200 yards distant from the sea. The level ground at the base of the cone, widest on the southern side, is covered with tall bamboo grass and various kinds of low bushes. On the inner slopes of the crater, the south and east sides, which are of rocky formation, support a certain amount of small forest, in which we quickly noticed the absence of such tropical forms as palms, rattans and lianas, and of trees more than 60 or 70 feet high and 4 or 5 feet in diameter;[7] the remaining sides, composed mainly of volcanic ash, afford foothold only to a coarse tussocky plant growing in clumps on the loose black dust. We found these latter slopes not at all an attractive scene of operations, for the feet sank and slipped at every step, and raised at the same time clouds of fine black dust.