One day I accompanied Captain Fitz Roy to Bald Head, the place
mentioned by so many navigators, where some imagined that they saw
corals, and others that they saw petrified trees, standing in the
position in which they had grown. According to our view, the beds
have been formed by the wind having heaped up fine sand, composed
of minute rounded particles of shells and corals, during which
process branches and roots of trees, together with many
land-shells, became enclosed. The whole then became consolidated by
the percolation of calcareous matter; and the cylindrical cavities
left by the decaying of the wood were thus also filled up with a
hard pseudo-stalactitical stone. The weather is now wearing away
the softer parts, and in consequence the hard casts of the roots
and branches of the trees project above the surface, and, in a
singularly deceptive manner, resemble the stumps of a dead thicket.
A large tribe of natives, called the White Cockatoo men happened to
pay the settlement a visit while we were there. These men, as well
as those of the tribe belonging to King George's Sound, being
tempted by the offer of some tubs of rice and sugar, were persuaded
to hold a "corrobery," or great dancing-party.
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