A strong south-east wind caused a very low tide the following day, laying bare a sandstone flat about an eighth of a mile from the beach, upon which black objects were visible. I had already found on the shore opposite at high tide, large pieces of lignite coal and petrified wood. Putting on my long boots, I soon discovered the base trunks of hundreds of forest trees from one to six feet in length extending as far out to sea as I could wade--some lying down and formed into lignite coal, but the greater number standing and petrified as hard as rock. The rocks along the north coast for hundreds of miles, show unmistakable evidence of violent volcanic action, and though the ocean has receded within the memory of Indians now living, these islands are probably the mountain tops of a submerged land, separated from the main body of the continent by the sinking of the earth's surface. AN INTERESTING RIDE. September with its gales had arrived, the last of the sea-otter hunters, except Captain John and family, we had met beyond North Island, leaving the coast for the winter; our rations were getting short, everything induced me to push forward as rapidly as possible, and after lying for several hours on Frederick Island waiting for the sea to run down, I decided to advance. When we had rounded the first point and were fairly into the midst of the great rollers--"turn back! turn back!" exclaimed one of my men, which refusing to do he added; "My God! See the distance we must go." We had already on two or three occasions encountered sufficiently rough seas to give me great confidence in the seaworthiness of my canoe, which, though I had ribbed and decked fore and aft, every Indian who saw it thought unfit for the expedition, being, they said, too small, weak and cranky. I wished they could have seen her ride the great seas which come rolling in like mountains, before we reached land again. Ben Melin, a sailor of thirteen years experience on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, says he never saw so small a boat out-live such a sea. "We will all be drowned," said Bill, a young Hydah Indian, at the same time stripping off his clothing as I turned the prow of our little ship towards the shore. And yet we had not taken aboard two buckets full of water, which swept over the covered prow and would have swamped us, but for the decking. But everywhere along the shore we were nearing, and which had been described to me by Chief Edensaw as affording a good camping place, the sea was breaking with a loud roar. Surveying it carefully we discovered a narrow opening between two great rocks, where the interval between the breakers was thought to be sufficiently long to enable us by skillful management to pass through it. I had steered thus far with my left hand--my right hand being entirely useless--by strapping the paddle to the side of the canoe near the stern, and after directing my men to assist me with their oars upon a given signal, decided to go through.