Scarcely had he completed the outline when his father exclaimed,-- "Why, Andre, you have drawn a ham!" "Something uncommonly like it, I confess," replied Andre.

"I think we had better ask Captain Curtis to let us call our island Ham Rock." "Good," said I; "though sailors will need to keep it at a respectful distance, for they will scarcely find that their teeth are strong enough to tackle with it." M.Letourneur was quite correct; the outline of the reef as it stood clearly defined against the deep green water resembled nothing so much, as a fine York ham, of which the little creek, where the "Chancellor" had been stranded, corresponded to the hollow place above the knuckle.
The tide at this time was low, and the ship now lay heeled over very much to the starboard side, the few points of rock that emerged in the extreme south of the reef plainly marking the narrow passage through which she had been forced before she finally ran aground.
As soon as Andre had finished his sketch we descended by a slope as gradual as that by which we had come up, and made our way towards the west.

We had not gone very far when a beautiful grotto, perfect as an architectural structure, arrested our attention, M.Letourneur and Andre who have visited the Hebrides, pronounced it to be a Fingal's cave in miniature; a Gothic chapel that might form a fit vestibule for the cathedral cave of Staffa.

The basaltic rocks had cooled down into the same regular concentric prisms; there was the same dark canopied roof with its interstices filled up with its yellow lutings; the same precision of outline in the prismatic angles, sharp as though chiselled by a sculptor's hand; the same sonorous vibration of the air across the basaltic rocks, of which the Gaelic poets have feigned that the harps of the Fingal minstrelsy were made.

But whereas at Staffa the floor of the cave is always covered with a sheet of water, here the grotto was beyond the reach of all but the highest waves, whilst the prismatic shafts themselves formed quite a solid pavement.
After remaining nearly an hour in our newly-discovered grotto we returned to the "Chancellor," and communicated the result of our explorations to Curtis, who entered the island upon his chart by the name that Andre Letourneur had proposed.
Since its discovery we have not permitted a day to pass without spending some time in our Ham Rock grotto.