ten o’clock
`` 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 .