only separated from the coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty
feet across the narrowest. When the tide was full, this was clear
and still, like a pool on a land river; only there was a difference
in the weeds and fishes, and the water itself was green instead of
brown; but when the tide went out, in the bottom of the ebb, there
was a day or two in every month when you could pass dryshod from
Aros to the mainland. There was some good pasture, where my uncle
fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was better because the
ground rose higher on the islet than the main level of the Ross,
but this I am not skilled enough to settle. The house was a good
one for that country, two storeys high. It looked westward over a
bay, with a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could
watch the vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.

On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these
great granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in
troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they
stand, for all the world like their neighbours ashore; only the
salt water sobbing between them instead of the quiet earth, and
clots of sea-pink blooming on their sides instead of heather; and
the great sea conger to wreathe about the base of them instead of
the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can go wandering
between them in a boat for hours, echoes following you about the
labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man that hears
that cauldron boiling.

Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many, and much
greater in size. Indeed, they must grow monstrously bigger out to
sea, for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them
as thick as a country place with houses, some standing thirty feet