compared to a huge ship kept in first-rate order. I could not help,
when admiring the active industry, which had created such effects out
of such means, at the same time regretting that it had been wasted on
so poor and trifling an end. M. Lesson has remarked with justice, that
the English nation would have thought of making the island of Ascension
a productive spot, any other people would have held it as a mere
fortress in the ocean.
Near this coast nothing grows; further inland, an occasional green
castor-oil plant, and a few grasshoppers, true friends of the desert,
may be met with. Some grass is scattered over the surface of the
central elevated region, and the whole much resembles the worse parts
of the Welsh mountains. But scanty as the pasture appears, about six
hundred sheep, many goats, a few cows and horses, all thrive well on
it. Of native animals, land-crabs and rats swarm in numbers. Whether
the rat is really indigenous, may well be doubted; there are two
varieties as described by Mr. Waterhouse; one is of a black colour,
with fine glossy fur, and lives on the grassy summit, the other is
brown-coloured and less glossy, with longer hairs, and lives near the
settlement on the coast. Both these varieties are one-third smaller
than the common black rat (M. rattus); and they differ from it both in
the colour and character of their fur, but in no other essential
respect. I can hardly doubt that these rats (like the common mouse,
which has also run wild) have been imported, and, as at the Galapagos,
have varied from the effect of the new conditions to which they have
been exposed: hence the variety on the summit of the island differs
from that on the coast. Of native birds there are none; but the
guinea-fowl, imported from the Cape de Verd Islands, is abundant, and
the common fowl has likewise run wild. Some cats, which were
originally turned out to destroy the rats and mice, have increased, so
as to become a great plague. The island is entirely without trees, in
which, and in every other respect, it is very far inferior to St.
Helena.
One of my excursions took me towards the S. W. extremity of the island.
The day was clear and hot, and I saw the island, not smiling with
beauty, but staring with naked hideousness. The lava streams are
covered with hummocks, and are rugged to a degree which, geologically
speaking, is not of easy explanation. The intervening spaces are
concealed with layers of pumice, ashes and volcanic tuff. Whilst
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