In general, Pencroft, Herbert, and Neb walked first, preceded by Top, who poked his nose into every bush.

The reporter and the engineer went together, Gideon Spilett ready to note every incident, the engineer silent for the most part, and only stepping aside to pick up one thing or another, a mineral or vegetable substance, which he put into his pocket, without making any remark.
"What can he be picking up ?" muttered Pencroft.

"I have looked in vain for anything that's worth the trouble of stooping for." Towards ten o'clock the little band descended the last declivities of Mount Franklin.

As yet the ground was scantily strewn with bushes and trees.

They were walking over yellowish calcinated earth, forming a plain of nearly a mile long, which extended to the edge of the wood.
Great blocks of that basalt, which, according to Bischof, takes three hundred and fifty millions of years to cool, strewed the plain, very confused in some places.