APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/books/darwin/BEAGLE_4

Text File | 1997-10-01 | 305.6 KB | 5,751 lines

CHAPTER XVII

GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO

The whole Group Volcanic -- Numbers of Craters -- Leafless
Bushes Colony at Charles Island -- James Island -- Salt-lake in
Crater -- Natural History of the Group -- Ornithology, curious
Finches -- Reptiles -- Great Tortoises, habits of -- Marine
Lizard, feeds on Sea-weed -- Terrestrial Lizard, burrowing
habits, herbivorous -- Importance of Reptiles in the
Archipelago -- Fish, Shells, Insects -- Botany -- American Type
of Organization -- Differences in the Species or Races on
different Islands -- Tameness of the Birds -- Fear of Man, an
acquired Instinct.


SEPTEMBER 15th. -- This archipelago consists of ten
principal islands, of which five exceed the others in
size.  They are situated under the Equator, and between
five and six hundred miles westward of the coast of
America.  They are all formed of volcanic rocks; a few
fragments of granite curiously glazed and altered by the
heat, can hardly be considered as an exception.  Some of
the craters, surmounting the larger islands, are of immense
size, and they rise to a height of between three and four
thousand feet.  Their flanks are studded by innumerable
smaller orifices.  I scarcely hesitate to affirm, that there
must be in the whole archipelago at least two thousand
craters.  These consist either of lava or scoriae, or of finely-
stratified, sandstone-like tuff.  Most of the latter are
beautifully symmetrical; they owe their origin to eruptions of
volcanic mud without any lava: it is a remarkable circumstance
that every one of the twenty-eight tuff-craters which
were examined, had their southern sides either much lower
than the other sides, or quite broken down and removed.  As
all these craters apparently have been formed when standing
in the sea, and as the waves from the trade wind and the
swell from the open Pacific here unite their forces on the
southern coasts of all the islands, this singular uniformity
in the broken state of the craters, composed of the soft and
yielding tuff, is easily explained.

Considering that these islands are placed directly under
the equator, the climate is far from being excessively hot;
this seems chiefly caused by the singularly low temperature
of the surrounding water, brought here by the great southern


[map]


Polar current.  Excepting during one short season, very
little rain falls, and even then it is irregular; but the clouds
generally hang low.  Hence, whilst the lower parts of the
islands are very sterile, the upper parts, at a height of a
thousand feet and upwards, possess a damp climate and a
tolerably luxuriant vegetation.  This is especially the case
on the windward sides of the islands, which first receive and
condense the moisture from the atmosphere.

In the morning (17th) we landed on Chatham Island,
which, like the others, rises with a tame and rounded outline,
broken here and there by scattered hillocks, the remains
of former craters.  Nothing could be less inviting than the
first appearance.  A broken field of black basaltic lava,
thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great
fissures, is everywhere covered by stunted, sun-burnt brushwood,
which shows little signs of life.  The dry and parched
surface, being heated by the noon-day sun, gave to the air
a close and sultry feeling, like that from a stove: we fancied
even that the bushes smelt unpleasantly.  Although I diligently
tried to collect as many plants as possible, I succeeded
in getting very few; and such wretched-looking little
weeds would have better become an arctic than an equatorial
Flora.  The brushwood appears, from a short distance, as
leafless as our trees during winter; and it was some time
before I discovered that not only almost every plant was
now in full leaf, but that the greater number were in flower.
The commonest bush is one of the Euphorbiaceae: an acacia
and a great odd-looking cactus are the only trees which
afford any shade.  After the season of heavy rains, the islands
are said to appear for a short time partially green.  The
volcanic island of Fernando Noronha, placed in many respects
under nearly similar conditions, is the only other
country where I have seen a vegetation at all like this of
the Galapagos Islands.

The Beagle sailed round Chatham Island, and anchored
in several bays.  One night I slept on shore on a part of the
island, where black truncated cones were extraordinarily
numerous: from one small eminence I counted sixty of
them, all surmounted by craters more or less perfect.  The
greater number consisted merely of a ring of red scoriae
or slags, cemented together: and their height above the plain
of lava was not more than from fifty to a hundred feet; none
had been very lately active.  The entire surface of this part
of the island seems to have been permeated, like a sieve, by
the subterranean vapours: here and there the lava, whilst
soft, has been blown into great bubbles; and in other parts,
the tops of caverns similarly formed have fallen in, leaving
circular pits with steep sides.  From the regular form of the
many craters, they gave to the country an artificial appearance,
which vividly reminded me of those parts of Staffordshire,
where the great iron-foundries are most numerous.
The day was glowing hot, and the scrambling over the rough
surface and through the intricate thickets, was very fatiguing;
but I was well repaid by the strange Cyclopean scene.
As I was walking along I met two large tortoises, each of
which must have weighed at least two hundred pounds: one
was eating a piece of cactus, and as I approached, it stared
at me and slowly walked away; the other gave a deep hiss,
and drew in its head.  These huge reptiles, surrounded by
the black lava, the leafless shrubs, and large cacti, seemed to
my fancy like some antediluvian animals.  The few dull-
coloured birds cared no more for me than they did for the
great tortoises.

23rd. -- The Beagle proceeded to Charles Island.  This
archipelago has long been frequented, first by the bucaniers,
and latterly by whalers, but it is only within the last six
years, that a small colony has been established here.  The
inhabitants are between two and three hundred in number;
they are nearly all people of colour, who have been banished
for political crimes from the Republic of the Equator, of
which Quito is the capital.  The settlement is placed about
four and a half miles inland, and at a height probably of a
thousand feet.  In the first part of the road we passed
through leafless thickets, as in Chatham Island.  Higher up,
the woods gradually became greener; and as soon as we
crossed the ridge of the island, we were cooled by a fine
southerly breeze, and our sight refreshed by a green and
thriving vegetation.  In this upper region coarse grasses and
ferns abound; but there are no tree-ferns: I saw nowhere
any member of the palm family, which is the more singular,
as 360 miles northward, Cocos Island takes its name from
the number of cocoa-nuts.  The houses are irregularly scattered
over a flat space of ground, which is cultivated with
sweet potatoes and bananas.  It will not easily be imagined
how pleasant the sight of black mud was to us, after having
been so long, accustomed to the parched soil of Peru and
northern Chile.  The inhabitants, although complaining of
poverty, obtain, without much trouble, the means of subsistence.
In the woods there are many wild pigs and goats;
but the staple article of animal food is supplied by the
tortoises.  Their numbers have of course been greatly reduced
in this island, but the people yet count on two days'
hunting giving them food for the rest of the week.  It is
said that formerly single vessels have taken away as many
as seven hundred, and that the ship's company of a frigate
some years since brought down in one day two hundred
tortoises to the beach.

September  29th. -- We doubled the south-west extremity of
Albemarle Island, and the next day were nearly becalmed
between it and Narborough Island.  Both are covered with
immense deluges of black naked lava, which have flowed either
over the rims of the great caldrons, like pitch over the
rim of a pot in which it has been boiled, or have burst forth
from smaller orifices on the flanks; in their descent they
have spread over miles of the sea-coast.  On both of these
islands, eruptions are known to have taken place; and in
Albemarle, we saw a small jet of smoke curling from the
summit of one of the great craters.  In the evening we
anchored in Bank's Cove, in Albemarle Island.  The next
morning I went out walking.  To the south of the broken
tuff-crater, in which the Beagle was anchored, there was
another beautifully symmetrical one of an elliptic form; its
longer axis was a little less than a mile, and its depth about
500 feet.  At its bottom there was a shallow lake, in the
middle of which a tiny crater formed an islet.  The day was
overpoweringly hot, and the lake looked clear and blue: I
hurried down the cindery slope, and, choked with dust,
eagerly tasted the water -- but, to my sorrow, I found it salt
as brine.

The rocks on the coast abounded with great black lizards,
between three and four feet long; and on the hills, an ugly
yellowish-brown species was equally common.  We saw many of this
latter kind, some clumsily running out of the way, and others
shuffling into their burrows.  I shall presently describe in
more detail the habits of both these reptiles.  The whole of
this northern part of Albemarle Island is miserably sterile.

October 8th. -- We arrived at James Island: this island, as
well as Charles Island, were long since thus named after our
kings of the Stuart line.  Mr. Bynoe, myself, and our servants
were left here for a week, with provisions and a tent,
whilst the Beagle went for water.  We found here a party
of Spaniards, who had been sent from Charles Island to dry
fish, and to salt tortoise-meat.  About six miles inland, and
at the height of nearly 2000 feet, a hovel had been built in
which two men lived, who were employed in catching tortoises,
whilst the others were fishing on the coast.  I paid
this party two visits, and slept there one night.  As in the
other islands, the lower region was covered by nearly leafless
bushes, but the trees were here of a larger growth than
elsewhere, several being two feet and some even two feet nine
inches in diameter.  The upper region being kept damp by
the clouds, supports a green and flourishing vegetation.  So
damp was the ground, that there were large beds of a coarse
cyperus, in which great numbers of a very small water-rail
lived and bred.  While staying in this upper region, we lived
entirely upon tortoise-meat: the breast-plate roasted (as the
Gauchos do _carne con cuero_), with the flesh on it, is very
good; and the young tortoises make excellent soup; but
otherwise the meat to my taste is indifferent.

One day we accompanied a party of the Spaniards in
their whale-boat to a salina, or lake from which salt is
procured.  After landing, we had a very rough walk over a
rugged field of recent lava, which has almost surrounded a
tuff-crater, at the bottom of which the salt-lake lies.  The
water is only three or four inches deep, and rests on a layer
of beautifully crystallized, white salt.  The lake is quite
circular, and is fringed with a border of bright green succulent
plants; the almost precipitous walls of the crater are clothed
with wood, so that the scene was altogether both picturesque
and curious.  A few years since, the sailors belonging to a
sealing-vessel murdered their captain in this quiet spot; and
we saw his skull lying among the bushes.

During the greater part of our stay of a week, the sky
was cloudless, and if the trade-wind failed for an hour, the
heat became very oppressive.  On two days, the thermometer
within the tent stood for some hours at 93 degs.; but in the open
air, in the wind and sun, at only 85 degs.  The sand was extremely
hot; the thermometer placed in some of a brown colour
immediately rose to 137 degs., and how much above that
it would have risen, I do not know, for it was not graduated
any higher.  The black sand felt much hotter, so that
even in thick boots it was quite disagreeable to walk over it.


The natural history of these islands is eminently curious,
and well deserves attention.  Most of the organic productions
are aboriginal creations, found nowhere else; there is even
a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands;
yet all show a marked relationship with those of America,
though separated from that continent by an open space of
ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in width.  The archipelago
is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached
to America, whence it has derived a few stray colonists, and
has received the general character of its indigenous
productions.  Considering the small size of the islands, we feel
the more astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings,
and at their confined range.  Seeing every height crowned
with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava-
streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a
period geologically recent the unbroken ocean was here
spread out.  Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be
brought somewhat near to that great fact -- that mystery of
mysteries -- the first appearance of new beings on this earth.

Of terrestrial mammals, there is only one which must be
considered as indigenous, namely, a mouse (Mus Galapagoensis),
and this is confined, as far as I could ascertain, to
Chatham Island, the most easterly island of the group.  It
belongs, as I am informed by Mr. Waterhouse, to a division
of the family of mice characteristic of America.  At James
Island, there is a rat sufficiently distinct from the common
kind to have been named and described by Mr. Waterhouse;
but as it belongs to the old-world division of the family, and
as this island has been frequented by ships for the last hundred
and fifty years, I can hardly doubt that this rat is
merely a variety produced by the new and peculiar climate,
food, and soil, to which it has been subjected.  Although no
one has a right to speculate without distinct facts, yet even
with respect to the Chatham Island mouse, it should be borne
in mind, that it may possibly be an American species imported
here; for I have seen, in a most unfrequented part of
the Pampas, a native mouse living in the roof of a newly
built hovel, and therefore its transportation in a vessel is
not improbable: analogous facts have been observed by Dr.
Richardson in North America.

Of land-birds I obtained twenty-six kinds, all peculiar to
the group and found nowhere else, with the exception of one
lark-like finch from North America (Dolichonyx oryzivorus),
which ranges on that continent as far north as 54 degs., and
generally frequents marshes.  The other twenty-five birds
consist, firstly, of a hawk, curiously intermediate in structure
between a buzzard and the American group of carrion-feeding
Polybori; and with these latter birds it agrees most
closely in every habit and even tone of voice.  Secondly,
there are two owls, representing the short-eared and white
barn-owls of Europe.  Thirdly, a wren, three tyrant-flycatchers
(two of them species of Pyrocephalus, one or both of
which would be ranked by some ornithologists as only varieties),
and a dove -- all analogous to, but distinct from, American
species.  Fourthly, a swallow, which though differing
from the Progne purpurea of both Americas, only in being
rather duller colored, smaller, and slenderer, is considered
by Mr. Gould as specifically distinct.  Fifthly, there are three
species of mocking thrush -- a form highly characteristic of
America.  The remaining land-birds form a most singular
group of finches, related to each other in the structure of
their beaks, short tails, form of body and plumage: there are
thirteen species, which Mr. Gould has divided into four
subgroups.  All these species are peculiar to this archipelago;
and so is the whole group, with the exception of one species
of the sub-group Cactornis, lately brought from Bow Island,
in the Low Archipelago.  Of Cactornis, the two species may
be often seen climbing about the flowers of the great cactus-
trees; but all the other species of this group of finches,
mingled together in flocks, feed on the dry and sterile ground
of the lower districts.  The males of all, or certainly of the
greater number, are jet black; and the females (with perhaps
one or two exceptions) are brown.  The most curious fact is
the perfect gradation in the size of the beaks in the different
species of Geospiza, from one as large as that of a hawfinch
to that of a chaffinch, and (if Mr. Gould is right in including
his sub-group, Certhidea, in the main group) even to
that of a warbler.  The largest beak in the genus Geospiza
is shown in Fig. 1, and the smallest in Fig. 3; but instead of
there being only one intermediate species, with a beak of
the size shown in Fig. 2, there are no less than six species
with insensibly graduated beaks.  The beak of the sub-group
Certhidea, is shown in Fig. 4.  The beak of Cactornis is


[picture]

1. Geospiza magnirostris.      2. Geospiza fortis.
3. Geospiza parvula.           4. Certhidea olivasea.


somewhat like that of a starling, and that of the fourth
subgroup, Camarhynchus, is slightly parrot-shaped.  Seeing this
gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately
related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an
original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had
been taken and modified for different ends.  In a like manner
it might be fancied that a bird originally a buzzard, had been
induced here to undertake the office of the carrion-feeding
Polybori of the American continent.

Of waders and water-birds I was able to get only eleven
kinds, and of these only three (including a rail confined to
the damp summits of the islands) are new species.  Considering
the wandering habits of the gulls, I was surprised to
find that the species inhabiting these islands is peculiar, but
allied to one from the southern parts of South America.
The far greater peculiarity of the land-birds, namely,
twenty-five out of twenty-six, being new species, or at least
new races, compared with the waders and web-footed birds, is
in accordance with the greater range which these latter
orders have in all parts of the world.  We shall hereafter
see this law of aquatic forms, whether marine or freshwater,
being less peculiar at any given point of the earth's
surface than the terrestrial forms of the same classes,
strikingly illustrated in the shells, and in a lesser degree in
the insects of this archipelago.

Two of the waders are rather smaller than the same species
brought from other places: the swallow is also smaller,
though it is doubtful whether or not it is distinct from its
analogue.  The two owls, the two tyrant-catchers (Pyrocephalus)
and the dove, are also smaller than the analogous
but distinct species, to which they are most nearly related;
on the other hand, the gull is rather larger.  The two owls,
the swallow, all three species of mocking-thrush, the dove
in its separate colours though not in its whole plumage, the
Totanus, and the gull, are likewise duskier coloured than
their analogous species; and in the case of the mocking-
thrush and Totanus, than any other species of the two genera.
With the exception of a wren with a fine yellow breast,
and of a tyrant-flycatcher with a scarlet tuft and breast, none
of the birds are brilliantly coloured, as might have been
expected in an equatorial district.  Hence it would appear
probable, that the same causes which here make the immigrants
of some peculiar species smaller, make most of the
peculiar Galapageian species also smaller, as well as very
generally more dusky coloured.  All the plants have a
wretched, weedy appearance, and I did not see one beautiful
flower.  The insects, again, are small-sized and dull-coloured,
and, as Mr. Waterhouse informs me, there is nothing in their
general appearance which would have led him to imagine
that they had come from under the equator. [1] The birds,
plants, and insects have a desert character, and are not more
brilliantly coloured than those from southern Patagonia; we
may, therefore, conclude that the usual gaudy colouring of
the inter-tropical productions, is not related either to the
heat or light of those zones, but to some other cause, perhaps
to the conditions of existence being generally favourable
to life.


We will now turn to the order of reptiles, which gives
the most striking character to the zoology of these islands.
The species are not numerous, but the numbers of individuals
of each species are extraordinarily great.  There is one
small lizard belonging to a South American genus, and two
species (and probably more) of the Amblyrhynchus -- a genus
confined to the Galapagos Islands.  There is one snake which
is numerous; it is identical, as I am informed by M. Bibron,
with the Psammophis Temminckii from Chile. [2] Of sea-
turtle I believe there are more than one species, and of
tortoises there are, as we shall presently show, two or three
species or races.  Of toads and frogs there are none: I was
surprised at this, considering how well suited for them the
temperate and damp upper woods appeared to be.  It recalled
to my mind the remark made by Bory St. Vincent, [3]
namely, that none of this family are found on any of the
volcanic islands in the great oceans.  As far as I can ascertain
from various works, this seems to hold good throughout the
Pacific, and even in the large islands of the Sandwich
archipelago.  Mauritius offers an apparent exception, where I
saw the Rana Mascariensis in abundance: this frog is said
now to inhabit the Seychelles, Madagascar, and Bourbon;
but on the other hand, Du Bois, in his voyage in 1669, states
that there were no reptiles in Bourbon except tortoises; and
the Officier du Roi asserts that before 1768 it had been
attempted, without success, to introduce frogs into Mauritius
-- I presume for the purpose of eating: hence it may be well
doubted whether this frog is an aboriginal of these islands.
The absence of the frog family in the oceanic islands is the
more remarkable, when contrasted with the case of lizards,
which swarm on most of the smallest islands.  May this difference
not be caused, by the greater facility with which the
eggs of lizards, protected by calcareous shells might be
transported through salt-water, than could the slimy spawn
of frogs?

I will first describe the habits of the tortoise (Testudo
nigra, formerly called Indica), which has been so frequently
alluded to.  These animals are found, I believe, on all the
islands of the archipelago; certainly on the greater number.
They frequent in preference the high damp parts, but they
likewise live in the lower and arid districts.  I have already
shown, from the numbers which have been caught in a single
day, how very numerous they must be.  Some grow to an
immense size: Mr. Lawson, an Englishman, and vice-governor
of the colony, told us that he had seen several so large,
that it required six or eight men to lift them from the
ground; and that some had afforded as much as two hundred
pounds of meat.  The old males are the largest, the females
rarely growing to so great a size: the male can readily be
distinguished from the female by the greater length of its
tail.  The tortoises which live on those islands where there
is no water, or in the lower and arid parts of the others, feed
chiefly on the succulent cactus.  Those which frequent the
higher and damp regions, eat the leaves of various trees, a
kind of berry (called guayavita) which is acid and austere,
and likewise a pale green filamentous lichen (Usnera plicata),
that hangs from the boughs of the trees.

The tortoise is very fond of water, drinking large quantities,
and wallowing in the mud.  The larger islands alone
possess springs, and these are always situated towards the
central parts, and at a considerable height.  The tortoises,
therefore, which frequent the lower districts, when thirsty,
are obliged to travel from a long distance.  Hence broad and
well-beaten paths branch off in every direction from the
wells down to the sea-coast; and the Spaniards by following
them up, first discovered the watering-places.  When I landed
at Chatham Island, I could not imagine what animal travelled
so methodically along well-chosen tracks.  Near the springs
it was a curious spectacle to behold many of these huge
creatures, one set eagerly travelling onwards with outstretched
necks, and another set returning, after having
drunk their fill.  When the tortoise arrives at the spring,
quite regardless of any spectator, he buries his head in the
water above his eyes, and greedily swallows great mouthfuls,
at the rate of about ten in a minute.  The inhabitants say
each animal stays three or four days in the neighbourhood
of the water, and then returns to the lower country; but
they differed respecting the frequency of these visits.  The
animal probably regulates them according to the nature of
the food on which it has lived.  It is, however, certain, that
tortoises can subsist even on these islands where there is no
other water than what falls during a few rainy days in the
year.

I believe it is well ascertained, that the bladder of the frog
acts as a reservoir for the moisture necessary to its existence:
such seems to be the case with the tortoise.  For some
time after a visit to the springs, their urinary bladders are
distended with fluid, which is said gradually to decrease in
volume, and to become less pure.  The inhabitants, when
walking in the lower district, and overcome with thirst, often
take advantage of this circumstance, and drink the contents
of the bladder if full: in one I saw killed, the fluid was quite
limpid, and had only a very slightly bitter taste.  The
inhabitants, however, always first drink the water in the
pericardium, which is described as being best.

The tortoises, when purposely moving towards any point,
travel by night and day, and arrive at their journey's end
much sooner than would be expected.  The inhabitants, from
observing marked individuals, consider that they travel a
distance of about eight miles in two or three days.  One large
tortoise, which I watched, walked at the rate of sixty yards
in ten minutes, that is 360 yards in the hour, or four miles a
day, -- allowing a little time for it to eat on the road.  During
the breeding season, when the male and female are together,
the male utters a hoarse roar or bellowing, which, it is said,
can be heard at the distance of more than a hundred yards.
The female never uses her voice, and the male only at these
times; so that when the people hear this noise, they know
that the two are together.  They were at this time (October)
laying their eggs.  The female, where the soil is sandy, deposits
them together, and covers them up with sand; but
where the ground is rocky she drops them indiscriminately
in any hole: Mr. Bynoe found seven placed in a fissure.  The
egg is white and spherical; one which I measured was seven
inches and three-eighths in circumference, and therefore
larger than a hen's egg.  The young tortoises, as soon as they
are hatched, fall a prey in great numbers to the carrion-
feeding buzzard.  The old ones seem generally to die from
accidents, as from falling down precipices: at least, several
of the inhabitants told me, that they never found one dead
without some evident cause.

The inhabitants believe that these animals are absolutely
deaf; certainly they do not overhear a person walking close
behind them.  I was always amused when overtaking one of
these great monsters, as it was quietly pacing along, to see
how suddenly, the instant I passed, it would draw in its head
and legs, and uttering a deep hiss fall to the ground with a
heavy sound, as if struck dead.  I frequently got on their
backs, and then giving a few raps on the hinder part of their
shells, they would rise up and walk away; -- but I found it
very difficult to keep my balance.  The flesh of this animal is
largely employed, both fresh and salted; and a beautifully
clear oil is prepared from the fat.  When a tortoise is caught,
the man makes a slit in the skin near its tail, so as to see
inside its body, whether the fat under the dorsal plate is
thick.  If it is not, the animal is liberated and it is said to
recover soon from this strange operation.  In order to secure
the tortoise, it is not sufficient to turn them like turtle, for
they are often able to get on their legs again.

There can be little doubt that this tortoise is an aboriginal
inhabitant of the Galapagos; for it is found on all, or nearly
all, the islands, even on some of the smaller ones where there
is no water; had it been an imported species, this would
hardly have been the case in a group which has been so little
frequented.  Moreover, the old Bucaniers found this tortoise
in greater numbers even than at present: Wood and Rogers
also, in 1708, say that it is the opinion of the Spaniards, that
it is found nowhere else in this quarter of the world.  It is
now widely distributed; but it may be questioned whether
it is in any other place an aboriginal.  The bones of a tortoise
at Mauritius, associated with those of the extinct Dodo,
have generally been considered as belonging to this tortoise;
if this had been so, undoubtedly it must have been there
indigenous; but M. Bibron informs me that he believes that
it was distinct, as the species now living there certainly is.

The Amblyrhynchus, a remarkable genus of lizards, is confined
to this archipelago; there are two species, resembling

[picture]

each other in general form, one being terrestrial and the
other aquatic.  This latter species (A. cristatus) was first
characterized by Mr. Bell, who well foresaw, from its short,
broad head, and strong claws of equal length, that its habits
of life would turn out very peculiar, and different from those
of its nearest ally, the Iguana.  It is extremely common on all
the islands throughout the group, and lives exclusively on the
rocky sea-beaches, being never found, at least I never saw
one, even ten yards in-shore.  It is a hideous-looking creature,
of a dirty black colour, stupid, and sluggish in its movements.
The usual length of a full-grown one is about a yard,
but there are some even four feet long; a large one weighed
twenty pounds: on the island of Albemarle they seem to
grow to a greater size than elsewhere.  Their tails are flattened
sideways, and all four feet partially webbed.  They are
occasionally seen some hundred yards from the shore,
swimming about; and Captain Collnett, in his Voyage says,
"They go to sea in herds a-fishing, and sun themselves on
the rocks; and may be called alligators in miniature." It
must not, however, be supposed that they live on fish.  When
in the water this lizard swims with perfect ease and quickness,
by a serpentine movement of its body and flattened tail
-- the legs being motionless and closely collapsed on its sides.
A seaman on board sank one, with a heavy weight attached
to it, thinking thus to kill it directly; but when, an hour
afterwards, he drew up the line, it was quite active.  Their
limbs and strong claws are admirably adapted for crawling over
the rugged and fissured masses of lava, which everywhere form
the coast.  In such situations, a group of six or seven of
these hideous reptiles may oftentimes be seen on the black
rocks, a few feet above the surf, basking in the sun with
outstretched legs.

I opened the stomachs of several, and found them largely
distended with minced sea-weed (Ulvae), which grows in
thin foliaceous expansions of a bright green or a dull red
colour.  I do not recollect having observed this sea-weed in
any quantity on the tidal rocks; and I have reason to believe
it grows at the bottom of the sea, at some little distance from
the coast.  If such be the case, the object of these animals
occasionally going out to sea is explained.  The stomach
contained nothing but the sea-weed.  Mr. Baynoe, however, found
a piece of crab in one; but this might have got in accidentally,
in the same manner as I have seen a caterpillar, in
the midst of some lichen, in the paunch of a tortoise.  The
intestines were large, as in other herbivorous animals.  The
nature of this lizard's food, as well as the structure of its
tail and feet, and the fact of its having been seen voluntarily
swimming out at sea, absolutely prove its aquatic habits;
yet there is in this respect one strange anomaly, namely, that
when frightened it will not enter the water.  Hence it is
easy to drive these lizards down to any little point overhanging
the sea, where they will sooner allow a person to catch
hold of their tails than jump into the water.  They do not
seem to have any notion of biting; but when much frightened
they squirt a drop of fluid from each nostril.  I threw one
several times as far as I could, into a deep pool left by the
retiring tide; but it invariably returned in a direct line to
the spot where I stood.  It swam near the bottom, with a
very graceful and rapid movement, and occasionally aided
itself over the uneven ground with its feet.  As soon as it
arrived near the edge, but still being under water, it tried to
conceal itself in the tufts of sea-weed, or it entered some
crevice.  As soon as it thought the danger was past, it
crawled out on the dry rocks, and shuffled away as quickly
as it could.  I several times caught this same lizard, by driving
it down to a point, and though possessed of such perfect
powers of diving and swimming, nothing would induce it to
enter the water; and as often as I threw it in, it returned in
the manner above described.  Perhaps this singular piece of
apparent stupidity may be accounted for by the circumstance,
that this reptile has no enemy whatever on shore,
whereas at sea it must often fall a prey to the numerous
sharks.  Hence, probably, urged by a fixed and hereditary
instinct that the shore is its place of safety, whatever the
emergency may be, it there takes refuge.

During our visit (in October), I saw extremely few small
individuals of this species, and none I should think under
a year old.  From this circumstance it seems probable that
the breeding season had not then commenced.  I asked several
of the inhabitants if they knew where it laid its eggs:
they said that they knew nothing of its propagation, although
well acquainted with the eggs of the land kind -- a fact,
considering how very common this lizard is, not a little
extraordinary.

We will now turn to the terrestrial species (A. Demarlii),
with a round tail, and toes without webs.  This lizard,
instead of being found like the other on all the islands, is
confined to the central part of the archipelago, namely to
Albemarle, James, Barrington, and Indefatigable islands.  To
the southward, in Charles, Hood, and Chatham islands, and
to the northward, in Towers, Bindloes, and Abingdon, I
neither saw nor heard of any.  It would appear as if it had
been created in the centre of the archipelago, and thence had
been dispersed only to a certain distance.  Some of these
lizards inhabit the high and damp parts of the islands, but
they are much more numerous in the lower and sterile
districts near the coast.  I cannot give a more forcible proof
of  their numbers, than by stating that when we were left at
James Island, we could not for some time find a spot free
from their burrows on which to pitch our single tent.  Like
their brothers the sea-kind, they are ugly animals, of a
yellowish orange beneath, and of a brownish red colour above:
from their low facial angle they have a singularly stupid
appearance.  They are, perhaps, of a rather less size than the
marine species; but several of them weighed between ten and
fifteen pounds.  In their movements they are lazy and half
torpid.  When not frightened, they slowly crawl along with
their tails and bellies dragging on the ground.  They often
stop, and doze for a minute or two, with closed eyes and hind
legs spread out on the parched soil.

They inhabit burrows, which they sometimes make between
fragments of lava, but more generally on level patches of the
soft sandstone-like tuff.  The holes do not appear to be very
deep, and they enter the ground at a small angle; so that
when walking over these lizard-warrens, the soil is constantly
giving way, much to the annoyance of the tired walker.  This
animal, when making its burrow, works alternately the opposite
sides of its body.  One front leg for a short time
scratches up the soil, and throws it towards the hind foot,
which is well placed so as to heave it beyond the mouth of
the hole.  That side of the body being tired, the other takes
up the task, and so on alternately.  I watched one for a long
time, till half its body was buried; I then walked up and pulled
it by the tail, at this it was greatly astonished, and soon
shuffled up to see what was the matter; and then stared me
in the face, as much as to say, "What made you pull my
tail?"

They feed by day, and do not wander far from their burrows;
if frightened, they rush to them with a most awkward
gait.  Except when running down hill, they cannot move
very fast, apparently from the lateral position of their legs.
They are not at all timorous: when attentively watching any
one, they curl their tails, and, raising themselves on their
front legs, nod their heads vertically, with a quick movement,
and try to look very fierce; but in reality they are not at all
so: if one just stamps on the ground, down go their tails,
and off they shuffle as quickly as they can.  I have frequently
observed small fly-eating lizards, when watching anything,
nod their heads in precisely the same manner; but I do not
at all know for what purpose.  If this Amblyrhynchus is held
and plagued with a stick, it will bite it very severely; but
I caught many by the tail, and they never tried to bite me.
If two are placed on the ground and held together, they will
fight, and bite each other till blood is drawn.

The individuals, and they are the greater number, which
inhabit the lower country, can scarcely taste a drop of water
throughout the year; but they consume much of the succulent
cactus, the branches of which are occasionally broken off
by the wind.  I several times threw a piece to two or three
of them when together; and it was amusing enough to see
them trying to seize and carry it away in their mouths, like
so many hungry dogs with a bone.  They eat very deliberately,
but do not chew their food.  The little birds are aware
how harmless these creatures are: I have seen one of the
thick-billed finches picking at one end of a piece of cactus
(which is much relished by all the animals of the lower
region), whilst a lizard was eating at the other end; and
afterwards the little bird with the utmost indifference hopped
on the back of the reptile.

I opened the stomachs of several, and found them full of
vegetable fibres and leaves of different trees, especially of
an acacia.  In the upper region they live chiefly on the acid
and astringent berries of the guayavita, under which trees
I have seen these lizards and the huge tortoises feeding
together.  To obtain the acacia-leaves they crawl up the low
stunted trees; and it is not uncommon to see a pair quietly
browsing, whilst seated on a branch several feet above the
ground.  These lizards, when cooked, yield a white meat,
which is liked by those whose stomachs soar above all
prejudices.

Humboldt has remarked that in intertropical South
America, all lizards which inhabit dry regions are esteemed
delicacies for the table.  The inhabitants state that those
which inhabit the upper damp parts drink water, but that
the others do not, like the tortoises, travel up for it from
the lower sterile country.  At the time of our visit, the
females had within their bodies numerous, large, elongated
eggs, which they lay in their burrows: the inhabitants seek
them for food.

These two species of Amblyrhynchus agree, as I have
already stated, in their general structure, and in many of
their habits.  Neither have that rapid movement, so
characteristic of the genera Lacerta and Iguana.  They are both
herbivorous, although the kind of vegetation on which they
feed is so very different.  Mr. Bell has given the name to the
genus from the shortness of the snout: indeed, the form of
the mouth may almost be compared to that of the tortoise:
one is led to suppose that this is an adaptation to their
herbivorous appetites.  It is very interesting thus to find a
well-characterized genus, having its marine and terrestrial
species, belonging to so confined a portion of the world.  The
aquatic species is by far the most remarkable, because it is
the only existing lizard which lives on marine vegetable
productions.  As I at first observed, these islands are not so
remarkable for the number of the species of reptiles, as for
that of the individuals, when we remember the well-beaten
paths made by the thousands of huge tortoises -- the many
turtles -- the great warrens of the terrestrial Amblyrhynchus
-- and the groups of the marine species basking on the coast-
rocks of every island -- we must admit that there is no other
quarter of the world where this Order replaces the herbivorous
mammalia in so extraordinary a manner.  The geologist
on hearing this will probably refer back in his mind to the
Secondary epochs, when lizards, some herbivorous, some
carnivorous, and of dimensions comparable only with our
existing whales, swarmed on the land and in the sea.  It is,
therefore, worthy of his observation, that this archipelago,
instead of possessing a humid climate and rank vegetation,
cannot be considered otherwise than extremely arid, and, for
an equatorial region, remarkably temperate.

To finish with the zoology: the fifteen kinds of sea-fish
which I procured here are all new species; they belong to
twelve genera, all widely distributed, with the exception of
Prionotus, of which the four previously known species live
on the eastern side of America.  Of land-shells I collected
sixteen kinds (and two marked varieties, of which, with the
exception of one Helix found at Tahiti, all are peculiar to
this archipelago: a single fresh-water shell (Paludina) is
common to Tahiti and Van Diemen's Land.  Mr. Cuming,
before our voyage procured here ninety species of sea-shells,
and this does not include several species not yet specifically
examined, of Trochus, Turbo, Monodonta, and Nassa.  He
has been kind enough to give me the following interesting
results: Of the ninety shells, no less than forty-seven are
unknown elsewhere -- a wonderful fact, considering how
widely distributed sea-shells generally are.  Of the forty-
three shells found in other parts of the world, twenty-five
inhabit the western coast of America, and of these eight are
distinguishable as varieties; the remaining eighteen (including
one variety) were found by Mr. Cuming in the Low
Archipelago, and some of them also at the Philippines.  This
fact of shells from islands in the central parts of the Pacific
occurring here, deserves notice, for not one single sea-shell is
known to be common to the islands of that ocean and to the
west coast of America.  The space of open sea running north
and south off the west coast, separates two quite distinct
conchological provinces; but at the Galapagos Archipelago
we have a halting-place, where many new forms have been
created, and whither these two great conchological provinces
have each sent up several colonists.  The American province
has also sent here representative species; for there is a
Galapageian species of Monoceros, a genus only found on the
west coast of America; and there are Galapageian species
of Fissurella and Cancellaria, genera common on the west
coast, but not found (as I am informed by Mr. Cuming) in
the central islands of the Pacific.  On the other hand, there
are Galapageian species of Oniscia and Stylifer, genera common
to the West Indies and to the Chinese and Indian seas,
but not found either on the west coast of America or in the
central Pacific.  I may here add, that after the comparison
by Messrs. Cuming and Hinds of about 2000 shells from
the eastern and western coasts of America, only one single
shell was found in common, namely, the Purpura patula,
which inhabits the West Indies, the coast of Panama,
and the Galapagos.  We have, therefore, in this quarter
of the world, three great conchological sea-provinces, quite
distinct, though surprisingly near each other, being separated
by long north and south spaces either of land or of
open sea.

I took great pains in collecting the insects, but excepting
Tierra del Fuego, I never saw in this respect so poor a country.
Even in the upper and damp region I procured very few,
excepting some minute Diptera and Hymenoptera, mostly of
common mundane forms.  As before remarked, the insects,
for a tropical region, are of very small size and dull colours.
Of beetles I collected twenty-five species (excluding a
Dermestes and Corynetes imported, wherever a ship touches);
of these, two belong to the Harpalidae, two to the
Hydrophilidae, nine to three families of the Heteromera, and the
remaining twelve to as many different families.  This
circumstance of insects (and I may add plants), where few in
number, belonging to many different families, is, I believe,
very general.  Mr. Waterhouse, who has published [4] an
account of the insects of this archipelago, and to whom I am
indebted for the above details, informs me that there are
several new genera: and that of the genera not new, one
or two are American, and the rest of mundane distribution.
With the exception of a wood-feeding Apate, and of one or
probably two water-beetles from the American continent,
all the species appear to be new.

The botany of this group is fully as interesting as the
zoology.  Dr. J. Hooker will soon publish in the "Linnean
Transactions" a full account of the Flora, and I am much
indebted to him for the following details.  Of flowering
plants there are, as far as at present is known, 185 species,
and 40 cryptogamic species, making altogether 225; of this
number I was fortunate enough to bring home 193.  Of the
flowering plants, 100 are new species, and are probably confined
to this archipelago.  Dr. Hooker conceives that, of the
plants not so confined, at least 10 species found near the
cultivated ground at Charles Island, have been imported.
It is, I think, surprising that more American species have
not been introduced naturally, considering that the distance
is only between 500 and 600 miles from the continent, and
that (according to Collnet, p. 58) drift-wood, bamboos, canes,
and the nuts of a palm, are often washed on the south-eastern
shores.  The proportion of 100 flowering plants out of 183
(or 175 excluding the imported weeds) being new, is sufficient,
I conceive, to make the Galapagos Archipelago a distinct
botanical province; but this Flora is not nearly so
peculiar as that of St. Helena, nor, as I am informed by
Dr. Hooker, of Juan Fernandez.  The peculiarity of the
Galapageian Flora is best shown in certain families; -- thus
there are 21 species of Compositae, of which 20 are peculiar
to this archipelago; these belong to twelve genera, and of
these genera no less than ten are confined to the archipelago!
Dr. Hooker informs me that the Flora has an undoubtedly
Western American character; nor can he detect in it any
affinity with that of the Pacific.  If, therefore, we except the
eighteen marine, the one fresh-water, and one land-shell,
which have apparently come here as colonists from the
central islands of the Pacific, and likewise the one distinct
Pacific species of the Galapageian group of finches, we see
that this archipelago, though standing in the Pacific Ocean,
is zoologically part of America.

If this character were owing merely to immigrants from
America, there would be little remarkable in it; but we see
that a vast majority of all the land animals, and that more
than half of the flowering plants, are aboriginal productions
It was most striking to be surrounded by new birds, new
reptiles, new shells, new insects, new plants, and yet by
innumerable trifling details of structure, and even by the tones
of voice and plumage of the birds, to have the temperate plains
of Patagonia, or rather the hot dry deserts of Northern Chile,
vividly brought before my eyes.  Why, on these small points
of land, which within a late geological period must have
been covered by the ocean, which are formed by basaltic lava,
and therefore differ in geological character from the American
continent, and which are placed under a peculiar climate,
-- why were their aboriginal inhabitants, associated, I may
add, in different proportions both in kind and number from
those on the continent, and therefore acting on each other
in a different manner -- why were they created on American
types of organization?  It is probable that the islands of the
Cape de Verd group resemble, in all their physical conditions,
far more closely the Galapagos Islands, than these latter
physically resemble the coast of America, yet the aboriginal
inhabitants of the two groups are totally unlike; those of the
Cape de Verd Islands bearing the impress of Africa, as
the inhabitants of the Galapagos Archipelago are stamped
with that of America


I have not as yet noticed by far the most remarkable feature
in the natural history of this archipelago; it is, that
the different islands to a considerable extent are inhabited by
a different set of beings.  My attention was first called to
this fact by the Vice-Governor, Mr. Lawson, declaring that
the tortoises differed from the different islands, and that he
could with certainty tell from which island any one was
brought.  I did not for some time pay sufficient attention
to this statement, and I had already partially mingled together
the collections from two of the islands.  I never
dreamed that islands, about 50 or 60 miles apart, and most of
them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same
rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to a nearly
equal height, would have been differently tenanted; but we
shall soon see that this is the case.  It is the fate of most
voyagers, no sooner to discover what is most interesting in
any locality, than they are hurried from it; but I ought,
perhaps, to be thankful that I obtained sufficient materials to
establish this most remarkable fact in the distribution of
organic beings.

The inhabitants, as I have said, state that they can distinguish
the tortoises from the different islands; and that
they differ not only in size, but in other characters.  Captain
Porter has described [5] those from Charles and from the nearest
island to it, namely, Hood Island, as having their shells
in front thick and turned up like a Spanish saddle, whilst
the tortoises from James Island are rounder, blacker, and
have a better taste when cooked.  M. Bibron, moreover,
informs me that he has seen what he considers two distinct
species of tortoise from the Galapagos, but he does not know
from which islands.  The specimens that I brought from
three islands were young ones: and probably owing to this
cause neither Mr. Gray nor myself could find in them any
specific differences.  I have remarked that the marine
Amblyrhynchus was larger at Albemarle Island than elsewhere;
and M. Bibron informs me that he has seen two distinct
aquatic species of this genus; so that the different
islands probably have their representative species or races
of the Amblyrhynchus, as well as of the tortoise.  My attention
was first thoroughly aroused, by comparing together
the numerous specimens, shot by myself and several other
parties on board, of the mocking-thrushes, when, to my
astonishment, I discovered that all those from Charles Island
belonged to one species (Mimus trifasciatus) all from
Albemarle Island to M. parvulus; and all from James and
Chatham Islands (between which two other islands are situated,
as connecting links) belonged to M. melanotis.  These
two latter species are closely allied, and would by some
ornithologists be considered as only well-marked races or
varieties; but the Mimus trifasciatus is very distinct.
Unfortunately most of the specimens of the finch tribe were
mingled together; but I have strong reasons to suspect that
some of the species of the sub-group Geospiza are confined
to separate islands.  If the different islands have their
representatives of Geospiza, it may help to explain the
singularly large number of the species of this sub-group in this
one small archipelago, and as a probable consequence of their
numbers, the perfectly graduated series in the size of their
beaks.  Two species of the sub-group Cactornis, and two of
the Camarhynchus, were procured in the archipelago; and
of the numerous specimens of these two sub-groups shot by
four collectors at James Island, all were found to belong to
one species of each; whereas the numerous specimens shot
either on Chatham or Charles Island (for the two sets were
mingled together) all belonged to the two other species:
hence we may feel almost sure that these islands possess
their respective species of these two sub-groups.  In land-
shells this law of distribution does not appear to hold good.
In my very small collection of insects, Mr. Waterhouse
remarks, that of those which were ticketed with their locality,
not one was common to any two of the islands.

If we now turn to the Flora, we shall find the aboriginal
plants of the different islands wonderfully different.  I give
all the following results on the high authority of my friend
Dr. J. Hooker.  I may premise that I indiscriminately collected
everything in flower on the different islands, and fortunately
kept my collections separate.  Too much confidence,
however, must not be placed in the proportional results, as
the small collections brought home by some other naturalists
though in some respects confirming the results, plainly show
that much remains to be done in the botany of this group:
the Leguminosae, moreover, has as yet been only approximately
worked out: --

----------------------------------------------------------------
                                                     Number of
                                                     Species
                                                     confined
                                                     to the
                  Number of   Number of              Galapagos
                  species     species      Number    Archipelago
         Total    found in    confined     confined  but found
Name     Number   other       to the       to the    on more
of       of       parts of    Galapagos    one       than the
Island   Species  the world   Archipelago  island    one island
----------------------------------------------------------------
James       71       33           38           30        8
Albemarle    4       18           26           22        4
Chatham     32       16           16           12        4
Charles     68       39           29           21        8
                 (or 29, if
                 the probably
                 imported
                 plants be
                 subtracted.)
----------------------------------------------------------------

Hence we have the truly wonderful fact, that in James
Island, of the thirty-eight Galapageian plants, or those found
in no other part of the world, thirty are exclusively confined
to this one island; and in Albemarle Island, of the twenty-
six aboriginal Galapageian plants, twenty-two are confined
to this one island, that is, only four are at present known to
grow in the other islands of the archipelago; and so on, as
shown in the above table, with the plants from Chatham and
Charles Islands.  This fact will, perhaps, be rendered even
more striking, by giving a few illustrations: -- thus, Scalesia,
a remarkable arborescent genus of the Compositae, is confined
to the archipelago: it has six species: one from Chatham,
one from Albemarle, one from Charles Island, two from
James Island, and the sixth from one of the three latter
islands, but it is not known from which: not one of these six
species grows on any two islands.  Again, Euphorbia, a mundane
or widely distributed genus, has here eight species, of
which seven are confined to the archipelago, and not one
found on any two islands: Acalypha and Borreria, both mundane
genera, have respectively six and seven species, none
of which have the same species on two islands, with the
exception of one Borreria, which does occur on two islands.
The species of the Compositae are particularly local; and Dr.
Hooker has furnished me with several other most striking
illustrations of the difference of the species on the different
islands.  He remarks that this law of distribution holds good
both with those genera confined to the archipelago, and those
distributed in other quarters of the world: in like manner
we have seen that the different islands have their proper
species of the mundane genus of tortoise, and of the widely
distributed American genus of the mocking-thrush, as well
as of two of the Galapageian sub-groups of finches, and
almost certainly of the Galapageian genus Amblyrhynchus.

The distribution of the tenants of this archipelago would
not be nearly so wonderful, if, for instance, one island had
a mocking-thrush, and a second island some other quite distinct
genus, -- if one island had its genus of lizard, and a
second island another distinct genus, or none whatever; -- or
if the different islands were inhabited, not by representative
species of the same genera of plants, but by totally different
genera, as does to a certain extent hold good: for, to give
one instance, a large berry-bearing tree at James Island has
no representative species in Charles Island.  But it is the
circumstance, that several of the islands possess their own
species of the tortoise, mocking-thrush, finches, and numerous
plants, these species having the same general habits,
occupying analogous situations, and obviously filling the
same place in the natural economy of this archipelago, that
strikes me with wonder.  It may be suspected that some of
these representative species, at least in the case of the
tortoise and of some of the birds, may hereafter prove to be
only well-marked races; but this would be of equally great
interest to the philosophical naturalist.  I have said that most
of the islands are in sight of each other: I may specify that
Charles Island is fifty miles from the nearest part of Chatham
Island, and thirty-three miles from the nearest part of
Albemarle Island.  Chatham Island is sixty miles from the
nearest part of James Island, but there are two intermediate
islands between them which were not visited by me.  James
Island is only ten miles from the nearest part of Albemarle
Island, but the two points where the collections were made
are thirty-two miles apart.  I must repeat, that neither the
nature of the soil, nor height of the land, nor the climate,
nor the general character of the associated beings, and
therefore their action one on another, can differ much in the
different islands.  If there be any sensible difference in their
climates, it must be between the Windward group (namely,
Charles and Chatham Islands), and that to leeward; but
there seems to be no corresponding difference in the productions
of these two halves of the archipelago.

The only light which I can throw on this remarkable difference
in the inhabitants of the different islands, is, that
very strong currents of the sea running in a westerly and
W.N.W. direction must separate, as far as transportal by the
sea is concerned, the southern islands from the northern
ones; and between these northern islands a strong N.W. current
was observed, which must effectually separate James
and Albemarle Islands.  As the archipelago is free to a
most remarkable degree from gales of wind, neither the
birds, insects, nor lighter seeds, would be blown from island
to island.  And lastly, the profound depth of the ocean between
the islands, and their apparently recent (in a geological
sense) volcanic origin, render it highly unlikely that they
were ever united; and this, probably, is a far more important
consideration than any other, with respect to the geographical
distribution of their inhabitants.  Reviewing the facts
here given, one is astonished at the amount of creative force,
if such an expression may be used, displayed on these small,
barren, and rocky islands; and still more so, at its diverse
yet analogous action on points so near each other.  I have
said that the Galapagos Archipelago might be called a satellite
attached to America, but it should rather be called a
group of satellites, physically similar, organically distinct,
yet intimately related to each other, and all related in a
marked, though much lesser degree, to the great American
continent.

I will conclude my description of the natural history of
these islands, by giving an account of the extreme tameness
of the birds.

This disposition is common to all the terrestrial species;
namely, to the mocking-thrushes, the finches, wrens, tyrant-
flycatchers, the dove, and carrion-buzzard.  All of them are
often approached sufficiently near to be killed with a switch,
and sometimes, as I myself tried, with a cap or hat.  A gun
is here almost superfluous; for with the muzzle I pushed a
hawk off the branch of a tree.  One day, whilst lying down,
a mocking-thrush alighted on the edge of a pitcher, made of
the shell of a tortoise, which I held in my hand, and began
very quietly to sip the water; it allowed me to lift it from
the ground whilst seated on the vessel: I often tried, and
very nearly succeeded, in catching these birds by their legs.
Formerly the birds appear to have been even tamer than at
present.  Cowley (in the year 1684) says that the "Turtledoves
were so tame, that they would often alight on our hats
and arms, so as that we could take them alive, they not fearing
man, until such time as some of our company did fire at
them, whereby they were rendered more shy." Dampier
also, in the same year, says that a man in a morning's walk
might kill six or seven dozen of these doves.  At present,
although certainly very tame, they do not alight on people's
arms, nor do they suffer themselves to be killed in such large
numbers.  It is surprising that they have not become wilder;
for these islands during the last hundred and fifty  years have
been frequently visited by bucaniers and whalers; and the
sailors, wandering through the wood in search of tortoises,
always take cruel delight in knocking down the little birds.
These birds, although now still more persecuted, do not
readily become wild.  In Charles Island, which had then
been colonized about six years, I saw a boy sitting by a well
with a switch in his hand, with which he killed the doves
and finches as they came to drink.  He had already procured
a little heap of them for his dinner, and he said that he had
constantly been in the habit of waiting by this well for the
same purpose.  It would appear that the birds of this
archipelago, not having as yet learnt that man is a more
dangerous animal than the tortoise or the Amblyrhynchus,
disregard him, in the same manner as in England shy birds, such
as magpies, disregard the cows and horses grazing in our fields.

The Falkland Islands offer a second instance of birds
with a similar disposition.  The extraordinary tameness of
the little Opetiorhynchus has been remarked by Pernety,
Lesson, and other voyagers.  It is not, however, peculiar to
that bird: the Polyborus, snipe, upland and lowland goose,
thrush, bunting, and even some true hawks, are all more or
less tame.  As the birds are so tame there, where foxes,
hawks, and owls occur, we may infer that the absence of all
rapacious animals at the Galapagos, is not the cause of their
tameness here.  The upland geese at the Falklands show, by
the precaution they take in building on the islets, that they
are aware of their danger from the foxes; but they are not
by this rendered wild towards man.  This tameness of the
birds, especially of the waterfowl, is strongly contrasted with
the habits of the same species in Tierra del Fuego, where for
ages past they have been persecuted by the wild inhabitants.
In the Falklands, the sportsman may sometimes kill more
of the upland geese in one day than he can carry home;
whereas in Tierra del Fuego it is nearly as difficult to kill
one, as it is in England to shoot the common wild goose.

In the time of Pernety (1763), all the birds there appear
to have been much tamer than at present; he states that the
Opetiorhynchus would almost perch on his finger; and that
with a wand he killed ten in half an hour.  At that period
the birds must have been about as tame as they now are at
the Galapagos.  They appear to have learnt caution more
slowly at these latter islands than at the Falklands, where
they have had proportionate means of experience; for besides
frequent visits from vessels, those islands have been at
intervals colonized during the entire period.  Even formerly,
when all the birds were so tame, it was impossible by Pernety's
account to kill the black-necked swan -- a bird of
passage, which probably brought with it the wisdom learnt
in foreign countries.

I may add that, according to Du Bois, all the birds at
Bourbon in 1571-72, with the exception of the flamingoes
and geese, were so extremely tame, that they could be caught
by the hand, or killed in any number with a stick.  Again,
at Tristan d'Acunha in the Atlantic, Carmichael [6] states that
the only two land-birds, a thrush and a bunting, were "so
tame as to suffer themselves to be caught with a hand-net."
From these several facts we may, I think, conclude, first, that
the wildness of birds with regard to man, is a particular
instinct directed against _him_, and not dependent upon any
general degree of caution arising from other sources of
danger; secondly, that it is not acquired by individual birds
in a short time, even when much persecuted; but that in the
course of successive generations it becomes hereditary.  With
domesticated animals we are accustomed to see new mental
habits or instincts acquired or rendered hereditary; but with
animals in a state of nature, it must always be most difficult
to discover instances of acquired hereditary knowledge.  In
regard to the wildness of birds towards man, there is no way
of accounting for it, except as an inherited habit:
comparatively few young birds, in any one year, have been
injured by man in England, yet almost all, even nestlings, are
afraid of him; many individuals, on the other hand, both at the
Galapagos and at the Falklands, have been pursued and
injured by man, yet have not learned a salutary dread of
him.  We may infer from these facts, what havoc the introduction
of any new beast of prey must cause in a country,
before the instincts of the indigenous inhabitants have
become adapted to the stranger's craft or power.

[1] The progress of research has shown that some of these birds,
which were then thought to be confined to the islands, occur on
the American continent.  The eminent ornithologist, Mr. Sclater,
informs me that this is the case with the Strix punctatissima
and Pyrocephalus nanus; and probably with the Otus Galapagoensis
and Zenaida Galapagoensis: so that the number of endemic birds
is reduced to twenty-three, or probably to twenty-one.  Mr.
Sclater thinks that one or two of these endemic forms should be
ranked rather as varieties than species, which always seemed to
me probable.

[2] This is stated by Dr. Gunther (Zoolog. Soc. Jan 24th,
1859) to be a peculiar species, not known to inhabit any other
country.

[3] Voyage aux Quatre Iles d'Afrique.  With respect to the
Sandwich Islands, see Tyerman and Bennett's Journal, vol. i.
p. 434.  For Mauritius, see Voyage par un Officier, etc.,
part i. p. 170.  There are no frogs in the Canary Islands
(Webb et Berthelot, Hist. Nat. des Iles Canaries).  I saw
none at St. Jago in the Cape de Verds.  There are none at
St. Helena.

[4] Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. xvi. p. 19.

[5] Voyage in the U. S. ship Essex, vol. i. p. 215.

[6] Linn. Trans., vol. xii. p. 496.  The most anomalous fact on
this subject which I have met with is the wildness of the small
birds in the Arctic parts of North America (as described by
Richardson, Fauna Bor., vol. ii. p. 332), where they are said
never to be persecuted.  This case is the more strange, because
it is asserted that some of the same species in their winter-
quarters in the United States are tame.  There is much, as Dr.
Richardson well remarks, utterly inexplicable connected with the
different degrees of shyness and care with which birds conceal
their nests.  How strange it is that the English wood-pigeon,
generally so wild a bird, should very frequently rear its young
in shrubberies close to houses!



CHAPTER XVIII

TAHITI AND NEW ZEALAND

Pass through the Low Archipelago -- Tahiti -- Aspect --
Vegetation on the Mountains -- View of Eimeo -- Excursion into
the Interior -- Profound Ravines -- Succession of Waterfalls --
Number of wild useful Plants -- Temperance of the Inhabitants --
Their moral state  -- Parliament convened -- New Zealand -- Bay
of Islands -- Hippahs  -- Excursion to Waimate -- Missionary
Establishment -- English Weeds now run wild -- Waiomio --
Funeral of a New Zealand Woman -- Sail for Australia.


OCTOBER 20th. -- The survey of the Galapagos Archipelago
being concluded, we steered towards Tahiti
and commenced our long passage of 3200 miles.  In
the course of a few days we sailed out of the gloomy and
clouded ocean-district which extends during the winter far
from the coast of South America.  We then enjoyed bright
and clear weather, while running pleasantly along at the
rate of 150 or 160 miles a day before the steady trade-wind.
The temperature in this more central part of the Pacific is
higher than near the American shore.  The thermometer in
the poop cabin, by night and day, ranged between 80 and
83 degs., which feels very pleasant; but with one degree or two
higher, the heat becomes oppressive.  We passed through
the Low or Dangerous Archipelago, and saw several of
those most curious rings of coral land, just rising above the
water's edge, which have been called Lagoon Islands.  A
long and brilliantly white beach is capped by a margin of
green vegetation; and the strip, looking either way, rapidly
narrows away in the distance, and sinks beneath the horizon
From the mast-head a wide expanse of smooth water can be
seen within the ring.  These low hollow coral islands bear
no proportion to the vast ocean out of which they abruptly
rise; and it seems wonderful, that such weak invaders are
not overwhelmed, by the all-powerful and never-tiring waves
of that great sea, miscalled the Pacific.

November 15th. -- At daylight, Tahiti, an island which
must for ever remain classical to the voyager in the South
Sea, was in view.  At a distance the appearance was not
attractive.  The luxuriant vegetation of the lower part could
not yet be seen, and as the clouds rolled past, the wildest
and most precipitous peaks showed themselves towards the
centre of the island.  As soon as we anchored in Matavai
Bay, we were surrounded by canoes.  This was our Sunday,
but the Monday of Tahiti: if the case had been reversed,
we should not have received a single visit; for the injunction
not to launch a canoe on the sabbath is rigidly obeyed.
After dinner we landed to enjoy all the delights produced
by the first impressions of a new country, and that country
the charming Tahiti.  A crowd of men, women, and children,
was collected on the memorable Point Venus, ready to
receive us with laughing, merry faces.  They marshalled
us towards the house of Mr. Wilson, the missionary of the
district, who met us on the road, and gave us a very friendly
reception.  After sitting a very short time in his house, we
separated to walk about, but returned there in the evening.

The land capable of cultivation, is scarcely in any part
more than a fringe of low alluvial soil, accumulated round
the base of the mountains, and protected from the waves of
the sea by a coral reef, which encircles the entire line of
coast.  Within the reef there is an expanse of smooth water,
like that of a lake, where the canoes of the natives can ply
with safety and where ships anchor.  The low land which
comes down to the beach of coral-sand, is covered by the
most beautiful productions of the intertropical regions.  In
the midst of bananas, orange, cocoa-nut, and bread-fruit
trees, spots are cleared where yams, sweet potatoes, and
sugar-cane, and pine-apples are cultivated.  Even the brush-wood
is an imported fruit-tree, namely, the guava, which
from its abundance has become as noxious as a weed.  In
Brazil I have often admired the varied beauty of the
bananas, palms, and orange-trees contrasted together; and
here we also have the bread-fruit, conspicuous from its large,
glossy, and deeply digitated leaf.  It is admirable to behold
groves of a tree, sending forth its branches with the vigour
of an English oak, loaded with large and most nutritious
fruit.  However seldom the usefulness of an object can
account for the pleasure of beholding it, in the case of these
beautiful woods, the knowledge of their high productiveness
no doubt enters largely into the feeling of admiration.  The
little winding paths, cool from the surrounding shade, led
to the scattered houses; the owners of which everywhere
gave us a cheerful and most hospitable reception.

I was pleased with nothing so much as with the inhabitants.
There is a mildness in the expression of their countenances
which at once banishes the idea of a savage; and
intelligence which shows that they are advancing in
civilization.  The common people, when working, keep the upper
part of their bodies quite naked; and it is then that the
Tahitians are seen to advantage.  They are very tall, broad-
shouldered, athletic, and well-proportioned.  It has been
remarked, that it requires little habit to make a dark skin
more pleasing and natural to the eye of an European than
his own colour.  A white man bathing by the side of a
Tahitian, was like a plant bleached by the gardener's art
compared with a fine dark green one growing vigorously in
the open fields.  Most of the men are tattooed, and the ornaments
follow the curvature of the body so gracefully, that
they have a very elegant effect.  One common pattern, varying
in its details, is somewhat like the crown of a palm-tree.
It springs from the central line of the back, and gracefully
curls round both sides.  The simile may be a fanciful one,
but I thought the body of a man thus ornamented was like
the trunk of a, noble tree embraced by a delicate creeper.

Many of the elder people had their feet covered with
small figures, so placed as to resemble a sock.  This fashion,
however, is partly gone by, and has been succeeded by others.
Here, although fashion is far from immutable, every one
must abide by that prevailing in his youth.  An old man
has thus his age for ever stamped on his body, and he cannot
assume the airs of a young dandy.  The women are tattooed
in the same manner as the men, and very commonly on their
fingers.  One unbecoming fashion is now almost universal:
namely, shaving the hair from the upper part of the head,
in a circular form, so as to leave only an outer ring.  The
missionaries have tried to persuade the people to change this
habit; but it is the fashion, and that is a sufficient answer
at Tahiti, as well as at Paris.  I was much disappointed in
the personal appearance of the women: they are far inferior
in every respect to the men.  The custom of wearing a white
or scarlet flower in the back of the head, or through a small
hole in each ear, is pretty.  A crown of woven cocoa-nut
leaves is also worn as a shade for the eyes.  The women
appear to be in greater want of some becoming costume even
than the men.

Nearly all the natives understand a little English -- that is,
they know the names of common things; and by the aid of
this, together with signs, a lame sort of conversation could
be carried on.  In returning in the evening to the boat, we
stopped to witness a very pretty scene.  Numbers of children
were playing on the beach, and had lighted bonfires
which illumined the placid sea and surrounding trees;
others, in circles, were singing Tahitian verses.  We seated
ourselves on the sand, and joined their party.  The songs
were impromptu, and I believe related to our arrival: one
little girl sang a line, which the rest took up in parts,
forming a very pretty chorus.  The whole scene made us
unequivocally aware that we were seated on the shores of an
island in the far-famed South Sea.

17th. -- This day is reckoned in the log-book as Tuesday
the 17th, instead of Monday the 16th, owing to our, so far,
successful chase of the sun.  Before breakfast the ship was
hemmed in by a flotilla of canoes; and when the natives
were allowed to come on board, I suppose there could not
have been less than two hundred.  It was the opinion of
every one that it would have been difficult to have picked out
an equal number from any other nation, who would have
given so little trouble.  Everybody brought something for
sale: shells were the main articles of trade.  The Tahitians
now fully understand the value of money, and prefer it to
old clothes or other articles.  The various coins, however, of
English and Spanish denomination puzzle them, and they
never seemed to think the small silver quite secure until
changed into dollars.  Some of the chiefs have accumulated
considerable sums of money.  One chief, not long since,
offered 800 dollars (about 160 pounds sterling) for a small
vessel; and frequently they purchase whale-boats and horses at
the rate of from 50 to 100 dollars.

After breakfast I went on shore, and ascended the nearest
slope to a height of between two and three thousand feet.
The outer mountains are smooth and conical, but steep; and
the old volcanic rocks, of which they are formed, have been
cut through by many profound ravines, diverging from the
central broken parts of the island to the coast.  Having
crossed the narrow low girt of inhabited and fertile land,
I followed a smooth steep ridge between two of the deep
ravines.  The vegetation was singular, consisting almost
exclusively of small dwarf ferns, mingled higher up, with
coarse grass; it was not very dissimilar from that on some
of the Welsh hills, and this so close above the orchard of
tropical plants on the coast was very surprising.  At the
highest point, which I reached, trees again appeared.  Of
the three zones of comparative luxuriance, the lower one
owes its moisture, and therefore fertility, to its flatness;
for, being scarcely raised above the level of the sea, the water
from the higher land drains away slowly.  The intermediate
zone does not, like the upper one, reach into a damp and
cloudy atmosphere, and therefore remains sterile.  The
woods in the upper zone are very pretty, tree-ferns replacing
the cocoa-nuts on the coast.  It must not, however, be
supposed that these woods at all equal in splendour the
forests of Brazil.  The vast numbers of productions, which
characterize a continent, cannot be expected to occur in
an island.

From the highest point which I attained, there was a good
view of the distant island of Eimeo, dependent on the same
sovereign with Tahiti.  On the lofty and broken pinnacles,
white massive clouds were piled up, which formed an island
in the blue sky, as Eimeo itself did in the blue ocean.  The
island, with the exception of one small gateway, is completely
encircled by a reef.  At this distance, a narrow but well-
defined brilliantly white line was alone visible, where the
waves first encountered the wall of coral.  The mountains
rose abruptly out of the glassy expanse of the lagoon, included
within this narrow white line, outside which the heaving
waters of the ocean were dark-coloured.  The view was
striking: it may aptly be compared to a framed engraving,
where the frame represents the breakers, the marginal paper
the smooth lagoon, and the drawing the island itself.  When
in the evening I descended from the mountain, a man, whom
I had pleased with a trifling gift, met me, bringing with him
hot roasted bananas, a pine-apple, and cocoa-nuts.  After
walking under a burning sun, I do not know anything more
delicious than the milk of a young cocoa-nut.  Pine-apples
are here so abundant that the people eat them in the same
wasteful manner as we might turnips.  They are of an excellent
flavor -- perhaps even better than those cultivated in
England; and this I believe is the highest compliment which
can be paid to any fruit.  Before going on board, Mr. Wilson
interpreted for me to the Tahitian who had paid me so adroit
an attention, that I wanted him and another man to accompany
me on a short excursion into the mountains.

18th. -- In the morning I came on shore early, bringing
with me some provisions in a bag, and two blankets for myself
and servant.  These were lashed to each end of a long
pole, which was alternately carried by my Tahitian companions
on their shoulders.  These men are accustomed thus
to carry, for a whole day, as much as fifty pounds at each
end of their poles.  I told my guides to provide themselves
with food and clothing; but they said that there was plenty
of food in the mountains, and for clothing, that their skins
were sufficient.  Our line of march was the valley of Tiaauru,
down which a river flows into the sea by Point Venus.
This is one of the principal streams in the island, and its
source lies at the base of the loftiest central pinnacles,
which rise to a height of about 7000 feet.  The whole island
is so mountainous that the only way to penetrate into the
interior is to follow up the valleys.  Our road, at first, lay
through woods which bordered each side of the river; and
the glimpses of the lofty central peaks, seen as through an
avenue, with here and there a waving cocoa-nut tree on one
side, were extremely picturesque.  The valley soon began to
narrow, and the sides to grow lofty and more precipitous.
After having walked between three and four hours, we
found the width of the ravine scarcely exceeded that of the
bed of the stream.  On each hand the walls were nearly vertical,
yet from the soft nature of the volcanic strata, trees
and a rank vegetation sprung from every projecting ledge.
These precipices must have been some thousand feet high;
and the whole formed a mountain gorge far more magnificent
than anything which I had ever before beheld.  Until
the midday sun stood vertically over the ravine, the air felt
cool and damp, but now it became very sultry.  Shaded by a
ledge of rock, beneath a facade of columnar lava, we ate our
dinner.  My guides had already procured a dish of small
fish and fresh-water prawns.  They carried with them a
small net stretched on a hoop; and where the water was
deep and in eddies, they dived, and like otters, with their
eyes open followed the fish into holes and corners, and thus
caught them.

The Tahitians have the dexterity of amphibious animals
in the water.  An anecdote mentioned by Ellis shows how
much they feel at home in this element.  When a horse was
landing for Pomarre in 1817, the slings broke, and it fell
into the water; immediately the natives jumped overboard,
and by their cries and vain efforts at assistance almost
drowned it.  As soon, however, as it reached the shore, the
whole population took to flight, and tried to hide themselves
from the man-carrying pig, as they christened the horse.

A little higher up, the river divided itself into three little
streams.  The two northern ones were impracticable, owing
to a succession of waterfalls which descended from the
jagged summit of the highest mountain; the other to all
appearance was equally inaccessible, but we managed to ascend
it by a most extraordinary road.  The sides of the
valley were here nearly precipitous, but, as frequently happens
with stratified rocks, small ledges projected, which were
thickly covered by wild bananas, lilaceous plants, and other
luxuriant productions of the tropics.  The Tahitians, by
climbing amongst these ledges, searching for fruit, had
discovered a track by which the whole precipice could be scaled.
The first ascent from the valley was very dangerous; for it
was necessary to pass a steeply inclined face of naked rock,
by  the aid of ropes which we brought with us.  How any
person discovered that this formidable spot was the only
point where the side of the mountain was practicable, I cannot
imagine.  We then cautiously walked along one of the
ledges till we came to one of the three streams.  This ledge
formed a flat spot, above which a beautiful cascade, some
hundred feet in height, poured down its waters, and beneath,
another high cascade fell into the main stream in the valley
below.  From this cool and shady recess we made a
circuit to avoid the overhanging waterfall.  As before, we
followed little projecting ledges, the danger being partly
concealed by the thickness of the vegetation.  In passing
from one of the ledges to another, there was a vertical wall
of rock.  One of the Tahitians, a fine active man, placed
the trunk of a tree against this, climbed up it, and then by
the aid of crevices reached the summit.  He fixed the ropes
to a projecting point, and lowered them for our dog and
luggage, and then we clambered up ourselves.  Beneath the
ledge on which the dead tree was placed, the precipice must
have been five or six hundred feet deep; and if the abyss
had not been partly concealed by the overhanging ferns and
lilies my head would have turned giddy, and nothing should
have induced me to have attempted it.  We continued to
ascend, sometimes along ledges, and sometimes along knife-
edged ridges, having on each hand profound ravines.  In
the Cordillera I have seen mountains on a far grander
scale, but for abruptness, nothing at all comparable with this.
In the evening we reached a flat little spot on the banks
of the same stream, which we had continued to follow, and
which descends in a chain of waterfalls: here we bivouacked
for the night.  On each side of the ravine there were great
beds of the mountain-banana, covered with ripe fruit.  Many
of these plants were from twenty to twenty-five feet high,
and from three to four in circumference.  By the aid of
strips of bark for rope, the stems of bamboos for rafters,
and the large leaf of the banana for a thatch, the Tahitians
in a few minutes built us an excellent house; and with
withered leaves made a soft bed.

They then proceeded to make a fire, and cook our evening
meal.  A light was procured, by rubbing a blunt pointed
stick in a groove made in another, as if with intention of
deepening it, until by the friction the dust became ignited.
A peculiarly white and very light wood (the Hibiscus tiliareus)
is alone used for this purpose: it is the same which
serves for poles to carry any burden, and for the floating
out-riggers to their canoes.  The fire was produced in a few
seconds: but to a person who does not understand the art,
it requires, as I found, the greatest exertion; but at last, to
my great pride, I succeeded in igniting the dust.  The
Gaucho in the Pampas uses a different method: taking an
elastic stick about eighteen inches long, he presses one end
on his breast, and the other pointed end into a hole in a piece
of wood, and then rapidly turns the curved part, like a
carpenter's centre-bit.  The Tahitians having made a small fire
of sticks, placed a score of stones, of about the size of
cricket-balls, on the burning wood.  In about ten minutes the
sticks were consumed, and the stones hot.  They had previously
folded up in small parcels of leaves, pieces of beef,
fish, ripe and unripe bananas, and the tops of the wild arum.
These green parcels were laid in a layer between two layers
of the hot stones, and the whole then covered up with
earth, so that no smoke or steam could escape.  In about
a quarter of an hour, the whole was most deliciously cooked.
The choice green parcels were now laid on a cloth of
banana leaves, and with a cocoa-nut shell we drank the
cool water of the running stream; and thus we enjoyed our
rustic meal.

I could not look on the surrounding plants without admiration.
On every side were forests of banana; the fruit
of which, though serving for food in various ways, lay in
heaps decaying on the ground.  In front of us there was an
extensive brake of wild sugar-cane; and the stream was
shaded by the dark green knotted stem of the Ava, -- so famous
in former days for its powerful intoxicating effects.  I
chewed a piece, and found that it had an acrid and unpleasant
taste, which would have induced any one at once to
have pronounced it poisonous.  Thanks to the missionaries,
this plant now thrives only in these deep ravines, innocuous to
every one.  Close by I saw the wild arum, the roots of which,
when well baked, are good to eat, and the young leaves
better than spinach.  There was the wild yam, and a liliaceous
plant called Ti, which grows in abundance, and has a soft
brown root, in shape and size like a huge log of wood: this
served us for dessert, for it is as sweet as treacle, and  with
a pleasant taste.  There were, moreover, several other wild
fruits, and useful vegetables.  The little stream, besides its
cool water, produced eels, and cray-fish.  I did indeed admire
this scene, when I compared it with an uncultivated one in
the temperate zones.  I felt the force of the remark, that
man, at least savage man, with his reasoning powers only
partly developed, is the child of the tropics.

As the evening drew to a close, I strolled beneath the
gloomy shade of the bananas up the course of the stream.
My walk was soon brought to a close, by coming to a waterfall
between two and three hundred feet high; and again
above this there was another.  I mention all these waterfalls
in this one brook, to give a general idea of the inclination
of the land.  In the little recess where the water fell, it did
not appear that a breath of wind had ever blown.  The thin
edges of the great leaves of the banana, damp with spray,
were unbroken, instead of being, as is so generally the case,
split into a thousand shreds.  From our position, almost
suspended on the mountain side, there were glimpses into the
depths of the neighbouring valleys; and the lofty points of
the central mountains, towering up within sixty degrees of
the zenith, hid half the evening sky.  Thus seated, it was
a sublime spectacle to watch the shades of night gradually
obscuring the last and highest pinnacles.

Before we laid ourselves down to sleep, the elder Tahitian
fell on his knees, and with closed eyes repeated a long
prayer in his native tongue.  He prayed as a Christian should
do, with fitting reverence, and without the fear of ridicule
or any ostentation of piety.  At our meals neither of the men
would taste food, without saying beforehand a short grace.
Those travellers who think that a Tahitian prays only when
the eyes of the missionary are fixed on him, should have
slept with us that night on the mountain-side.  Before morning
it rained very heavily; but the good thatch of banana-
leaves kept us dry.

November 19th. -- At daylight my friends, after their
morning prayer, prepared an excellent breakfast in the same
manner as in the evening.  They themselves certainly partook
of it largely; indeed I never saw any men eat near so
much.  I suppose such enormously capacious stomachs must
be the effect of a large part of their diet consisting of fruit
and vegetables, which contain, in a given bulk, a comparatively
small portion of nutriment.  Unwittingly, I was the
means of my companions breaking, as I afterwards learned,
one of their own laws, and resolutions: I took with me a
flask of spirits, which they could not refuse to partake of;
but as often as they drank a little, they put their fingers
before their mouths, and uttered the word "Missionary."
About two years ago, although the use of the ava was prevented,
drunkenness from the introduction of spirits became
very prevalent.  The missionaries prevailed on a few good
men, who saw that their country was rapidly going to ruin,
to join with them in a Temperance Society.  From good
sense or shame, all the chiefs and the queen were at last
persuaded to join.  Immediately a law was passed, that no
spirits should be allowed to be introduced into the island,
and that he who sold and he who bought the forbidden
article should be punished by a fine.  With remarkable justice,
a certain period was allowed for stock in hand to be
sold, before the law came into effect.  But when it did, a
general search was made, in which even the houses of the
missionaries were not exempted, and all the ava (as the
natives call all ardent spirits) was poured on the ground.
When one reflects on the effect of intemperance on the
aborigines of the two Americas, I think it will be acknowledged
that every well-wisher of Tahiti owes no common debt
of gratitude to the missionaries.  As long as the little island
of St. Helena remained under the government of the East
India Company, spirits, owing to the great injury they had
produced, were not allowed to be imported; but wine was
supplied from the Cape of Good Hope.  It is rather a striking
and not very gratifying fact, that in the same year
that spirits were allowed to be sold in Helena, their use was
banished from Tahiti by the free will of the people.

After breakfast we proceeded on our Journey.  As my object
was merely to see a little of the interior scenery, we
returned by another track, which descended into the main
valley lower down.  For some distance we wound, by a most
intricate path, along the side of the mountain which formed
the valley.  In the less precipitous parts we passed through
extensive groves of the wild banana.  The Tahitians, with
their naked, tattooed bodies, their heads ornamented with
flowers, and seen in the dark shade of these groves, would
have formed a fine picture of man inhabiting some primeval
land.  In our descent we followed the line of ridges; these
were exceedingly narrow, and for considerable lengths steep
as a ladder; but all clothed with vegetation.  The extreme
care necessary in poising each step rendered the walk fatiguing.
I did not cease to wonder at these ravines and
precipices: when viewing the country from one of the knife-
edged ridges, the point of support was so small, that the
effect was nearly the same as it must be from a balloon.  In
this descent we had occasion to use the ropes only once, at
the point where we entered the main valley.  We slept under
the same ledge of rock where we had dined the day before:
the night was fine, but from the depth and narrowness of the
gorge, profoundly dark.

Before actually seeing this country, I found it difficult
to understand two facts mentioned by Ellis; namely, that
after the murderous battles of former times, the survivors
on the conquered side retired into the mountains, where a
handful of men could resist a multitude.  Certainly half
a dozen men, at the spot where the Tahitian reared the old
tree, could easily have repulsed thousands.  Secondly, that
after the introduction of Christianity, there were wild men
who lived in the mountains, and whose retreats were unknown
to the more civilized inhabitants

November 20th. -- In the morning we started early, and
reached Matavai at noon.  On the road we met a large party
of noble athletic men, going for wild bananas.  I found that
the ship, on account of the difficulty in watering, had moved
to the harbour of Papawa, to which place I immediately
walked.  This is a very pretty spot.  The cove is surrounded
by reefs, and the water as smooth as in a lake.  The
cultivated ground, with its beautiful productions, interspersed
with cottages, comes close down to the water's edge.
From the varying accounts which I had read before reaching
these islands, I was very anxious to form, from my own
observation, a judgment of their moral state, -- although such
judgment would necessarily be very imperfect.  First impressions
at all times very much depend on one's previously
acquired ideas.  My notions were drawn from Ellis's "Polynesian
Researches" -- an admirable and most interesting
work, but naturally looking at everything under a favourable
point of view, from Beechey's Voyage; and from that of
Kotzebue, which is strongly adverse to the whole missionary
system.  He who compares these three accounts will, I think,
form a tolerably accurate conception of the present state of
Tahiti.  One of my impressions which I took from the two
last authorities, was decidedly incorrect; viz., that the
Tahitians had become a gloomy race, and lived in fear of the
missionaries.  Of the latter feeling I saw no trace, unless,
indeed, fear and respect be confounded under one name.
Instead of discontent being a common feeling, it would be
difficult in Europe to pick out of a crowd half so many merry
and happy faces.  The prohibition of the flute and dancing
is inveighed against as wrong and foolish; -- the more than
presbyterian manner of keeping the sabbath is looked at in
a similar light.  On these points I will not pretend to offer
any opinion to men who have resided as many years as I
was days on the island.

On the whole, it appears to me that the morality and
religion of the inhabitants are highly creditable.  There are
many who attack, even more acrimoniously than Kotzebue,
both the missionaries, their system, and the effects produced
by it.  Such reasoners never compare the present state with
that of the island only twenty years ago; nor even with that
of Europe at this day; but they compare it with the high
standard of Gospel perfection.  They expect the missionaries
to effect that which the Apostles themselves failed to do.
Inasmuch as the condition of the people falls short of
this high standard, blame is attached to the missionary, instead
of credit for that which he has effected.  They forget,
or will not remember, that human sacrifices, and the power
of an idolatrous priesthood -- a system of profligacy
unparalleled in any other part of the world -- infanticide a
consequence of that system -- bloody wars, where the conquerors
spared neither women nor children -- that all these have been
abolished; and that dishonesty, intemperance, and licentiousness
have been greatly reduced by the introduction of Christianity.
In a voyager to forget these things is base ingratitude; for
should he chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some
unknown coast, he will most devoutly pray that the lesson of
the missionary may have extended thus far.

In point of morality, the virtue of the women, it has been
often said, is most open to exception.  But before they are
blamed too severely, it will be well distinctly to call to mind
the scenes described by Captain Cook and Mr. Banks, in
which the grandmothers and mothers of the present race
played a part.  Those who are most severe, should consider
how much of the morality of the women in Europe is owing
to the system early impressed by mothers on their daughters,
and how much in each individual case to the precepts of
religion.  But it is useless to argue against such reasoners; --
I believe that, disappointed in not finding the field of
licentiousness quite so open as formerly, they will not give
credit to a morality which they do not wish to practise, or to a
religion which they undervalue, if not despise.

Sunday, 22nd. -- The harbour of Papiete, where the queen
resides, may be considered as the capital of the island: it is
also the seat of government, and the chief resort of shipping.
Captain Fitz Roy took a party there this day to hear divine
service, first in the Tahitian language, and afterwards in our
own.  Mr. Pritchard, the leading missionary in the island,
performed the service.  The chapel consisted of a large airy
framework of wood; and it was filled to excess by tidy, clean
people, of all ages and both sexes.  I was rather disappointed
in the apparent degree of attention; but I believe my
expectations were raised too high.  At all events the appearance
was quite equal to that in a country church in England.
The singing of the hymns was decidedly very pleasing, but
the language from the pulpit, although fluently delivered, did
not sound well: a constant repetition of words, like "tata
ta, mata mai," rendered it monotonous.  After English service,
a party returned on foot to Matavai.  It was a pleasant
walk, sometimes along the sea-beach and sometimes under
the shade of the many beautiful trees.

About two years ago, a small vessel under English colours
was plundered by some of the inhabitants of the Low Islands,
which were then under the dominion of the Queen of Tahiti.
It was believed that the perpetrators were instigated to this
act by some indiscreet laws issued by her majesty.  The
British government demanded compensation; which was acceded
to, and the sum of nearly three thousand dollars was
agreed to be paid on the first of last September.  The Commodore
at Lima ordered Captain Fitz Roy to inquire concerning
this debt, and to demand satisfaction if it were not
paid.  Captain Fitz Roy accordingly requested an interview
with the Queen Pomarre, since famous from the ill-treatment
she had received from the French; and a parliament was
held to consider the question, at which all the principal chiefs
of the island and the queen were assembled.  I will not attempt
to describe what took place, after the interesting account
given by Captain Fitz Roy.  The money, it appeared,
had not been paid; perhaps the alleged reasons were rather
equivocal; but otherwise I cannot sufficiently express our
general surprise at the extreme good sense, the reasoning
powers, moderation, candour, and prompt resolution, which
were displayed on all sides.  I believe we all left the meeting
with a very different opinion of the Tahitians, from what we
entertained when we entered.  The chiefs and people resolved
to subscribe and complete the sum which was wanting;
Captain Fitz Roy urged that it was hard that their private
property should be sacrificed for the crimes of distant
islanders.  They replied, that they were grateful for his
consideration, but that Pomarre was their Queen, and that they
were determined to help her in this her difficulty.  This
resolution and its prompt execution, for a book was opened
early the next morning, made a perfect conclusion to this
very remarkable scene of loyalty and good feeling.

After the main discussion was ended, several of the chiefs
took the opportunity of asking Captain Fitz Roy many intelligent
questions on international customs and laws, relating
to the treatment of ships and foreigners.  On some
points, as soon as the decision was made, the law was issued
verbally on the spot.  This Tahitian parliament lasted for
several hours; and when it was over Captain Fitz Roy invited
Queen Pomarre to pay the Beagle a visit.

November 25th. -- In the evening four boats were sent for
her majesty; the ship was dressed with flags, and the yards
manned on her coming on board.  She was accompanied by
most of the chiefs.  The behaviour of all was very proper:
they begged for nothing, and seemed much pleased with Captain
Fitz Roy's presents.  The queen is a large awkward
woman, without any beauty, grace or dignity.  She has only
one royal attribute: a perfect immovability of expression
under all circumstances, and that rather a sullen one.  The
rockets were most admired, and a deep "Oh!" could be
heard from the shore, all round the dark bay, after each
explosion.  The sailors' songs were also much admired; and
the queen said she thought that one of the most boisterous
ones certainly could not be a hymn!  The royal party did
not return on shore till past midnight.

26th. -- In the evening, with a gentle land-breeze, a course
was steered for New Zealand; and as the sun set, we had a
farewell view of the mountains of Tahiti -- the island to which
every voyager has offered up his tribute of admiration.

December 19th. -- In the evening we saw in the distance
New Zealand.  We may now consider that we have nearly
crossed the Pacific.  It is necessary to sail over this great
ocean to comprehend its immensity.  Moving quickly onwards
for weeks together, we meet with nothing but the
same blue, profoundly deep, ocean.  Even within the
archipelagoes, the islands are mere specks, and far distant one
from the other.  Accustomed to look at maps drawn on a
small scale, where dots, shading, and names are crowded
together, we do not rightly judge how infinitely small the
proportion of dry land is to water of this vast expanse.
The meridian of the Antipodes has likewise been passed; and
now every league, it made us happy to think, was one league
nearer to England.  These Antipodes call to one's mind old
recollections of childish doubt and wonder.  Only the other
day I looked forward to this airy barrier as a definite point
in our voyage homewards; but now I find it, and all such
resting-places for the imagination, are like shadows, which
a man moving onwards cannot catch.  A gale of wind lasting
for some days, has lately given us full leisure to measure
the future stages in our homeward voyage, and to wish
most earnestly for its termination.

December 21st. --  Early in the morning we entered the Bay
of Islands, and being becalmed for some hours near the
mouth, we did not reach the anchorage till the middle of the
day.  The country is hilly, with a smooth outline, and is
deeply intersected by numerous arms of the sea extending
from the bay.  The surface appears from a distance as if
clothed with coarse pasture, but this in truth is nothing but
fern.  On the more distant hills, as well as in parts of the
valleys, there is a good deal of woodland.  The general tint
of the landscape is not a bright green; and it resembles the
country a short distance to the south of Concepcion in Chile.
In several parts of the bay, little villages of square tidy
looking houses are scattered close down to the water's edge.
Three whaling-ships were lying at anchor, and a canoe every
now and then crossed from shore to shore; with these
exceptions, an air of extreme quietness reigned over the
whole district.  Only a single canoe came alongside.  This,
and the aspect of the whole scene, afforded a remarkable,
and not very pleasing contrast, with our joyful and boisterous
welcome at Tahiti.

In the afternoon we went on shore to one of the larger
groups of houses, which yet hardly deserves the title of a
village.  Its name is Pahia: it is the residence of the
missionaries; and there are no native residents except servants
and labourers.  In the vicinity of the Bay of Islands, the
number of Englishmen, including their families, amounts to
between two and three hundred.  All the cottages, many of
which are white-washed and look very neat, are the property
of the English.  The hovels of the natives are so diminutive
and paltry, that they can scarcely be perceived from a distance.
At Pahia, it was quite pleasing to behold the English
flowers in the gardens before the houses; there were
roses of several kinds, honeysuckle, jasmine, stocks, and
whole hedges of sweetbrier.

December 22nd. -- In the morning I went out walking; but
I soon found that the country was very impracticable.  All
the hills are thickly covered with tall fern, together with
a low bush which grows like a cypress; and very little
ground has been cleared or cultivated.  I then tried the
sea-beach; but proceeding towards either hand, my walk
was soon stopped by salt-water creeks and deep brooks.  The
communication between the inhabitants of the different
parts of the bay, is (as in Chiloe) almost entirely kept up
by boats.  I was surprised to find that almost every hill which
I ascended, had been at some former time more or less
fortified.  The summits were cut into steps or successive
terraces, and frequently they had been protected by deep
trenches.  I afterwards observed that the principal hills inland
in like manner showed an artificial outline.  These are
the Pas, so frequently mentioned by Captain Cook under the
name of "hippah;" the difference of sound being owing to
the prefixed article.

That the Pas had formerly been much used, was evident
from the piles of shells, and the pits in which, as I was
informed, sweet potatoes used to be kept as a reserve.  As
there was no water on these hills, the defenders could never
have anticipated a long siege, but only a hurried attack for
plunder, against which the successive terraces would have
afforded good protection.  The general introduction of firearms
has changed the whole system of warfare; and an exposed
situation on the top of a hill is now worse than useless.
The Pas in consequence are, at the present day, always built
on a level piece of ground.  They consist of a double stockade
of thick and tall posts, placed in a zigzag line, so that every
part can be flanked.  Within the stockade a mound of earth is
thrown up, behind which the defenders can rest in safety, or
use their fire-arms over it.  On the level of the ground
little archways sometimes pass through this breastwork,
by which means the defenders can crawl out to the stockade
and reconnoitre their enemies.  The Rev. W. Williams, who
gave me this account, added, that in one Pas he had noticed
spurs or buttresses projecting on the inner and protected
side of the mound of earth.  On asking the chief the use
of them, he replied, that if two or three of his men were
shot, their neighbours would not see the bodies, and so be
discouraged.

These Pas are considered by the New Zealanders as very
perfect means of defence: for the attacking force is never
so well disciplined as to rush in a body to the stockade, cut
it down, and effect their entry.  When a tribe goes to war,
the chief cannot order one party to go here and another
there; but every man fights in the manner which best pleases
himself; and to each separate individual to approach a stockade
defended by fire-arms must appear certain death.  I
should think a more warlike race of inhabitants could not
be found in any part of the world than the New Zealanders.
Their conduct on first seeing a ship, as described by Captain
Cook, strongly illustrates this: the act of throwing volleys
of stones at so great and novel an object, and their defiance
of "Come on shore and we will kill and eat you all," shows
uncommon boldness.  This warlike spirit is evident in many
of their customs, and even in their smallest actions.  If a
New Zealander is struck, although but in joke, the blow
must be returned and of this I saw an instance with one
of our officers.

At the present day, from the progress of civilization, there
is much less warfare, except among some of the southern
tribes.  I heard a characteristic anecdote of what took place
some time ago in the south.  A missionary found a chief and
his tribe in preparation for war; -- their muskets clean and
bright, and their ammunition ready.  He reasoned long on
the inutility of the war, and the little provocation which
had been given for it.  The chief was much shaken in his
resolution, and seemed in doubt: but at length it occurred
to him that a barrel of his gunpowder was in a bad state, and
that it would not keep much longer.  This was brought forward
as an unanswerable argument for the necessity of immediately
declaring war: the idea of allowing so much good
gunpowder to spoil was not to be thought of; and this settled
the point.  I was told by the missionaries that in the
life of Shongi, the chief who visited England, the love of
war was the one and lasting spring of every action.  The
tribe in which he was a principal chief had at one time been
oppressed by another tribe from the Thames River.  A
solemn oath was taken by the men that when their boys
should grow up, and they should be powerful enough, they
would never forget or forgive these injuries.  To fulfil this
oath appears to have been Shongi's chief motive for going
to England; and when there it was his sole object.  Presents
were valued only as they could be converted into arms;
of the arts, those alone interested him which were connected
with the manufacture of arms.  When at Sydney, Shongi,
by a strange coincidence, met the hostile chief of the Thames
River at the house of Mr. Marsden: their conduct was civil
to each other; but Shongi told him that when again in New
Zealand he would never cease to carry war into his country.
The challenge was accepted; and Shongi on his return fulfilled
the threat to the utmost letter.  The tribe on the
Thames River was utterly overthrown, and the chief to
whom the challenge had been given was himself killed.
Shongi, although harbouring such deep feelings of hatred
and revenge, is described as having been a good-natured
person.

In the evening I went with Captain Fitz Roy and Mr.
Baker, one of the missionaries, to pay a visit to Kororadika:
we wandered about the village, and saw and conversed with
many of the people, both men, women, and children.  Looking
at the New Zealander, one naturally compares him with
the Tahitian; both belonging to the same family of mankind.
The comparison, however, tells heavily against the New
Zealander.  He may, perhaps be superior in energy, but
in every other respect his character is of a much lower
order.  One glance at their respective expressions, brings
conviction to the mind that one is a savage, the other a
civilized man.  It would be vain to seek in the whole of
New Zealand a person with the face and mien of the old
Tahitian chief Utamme.  No doubt the extraordinary manner
in which tattooing is here practised, gives a disagreeable
expression to their countenances.  The complicated but
symmetrical figures covering the whole face, puzzle and mislead
an unaccustomed eye: it is moreover probable, that the deep
incisions, by destroying the play of the superficial muscles,
give an air of rigid inflexibility.  But, besides this, there is
a twinkling in the eye, which cannot indicate anything but
cunning and ferocity.  Their figures are tall and bulky; but
not comparable in elegance with those of the working-
classes in Tahiti.

But their persons and houses are filthily dirty and offensive:
the idea of washing either their bodies or their clothes
never seems to enter their heads.  I saw a chief, who was
wearing a shirt black and matted with filth, and when asked
how it came to be so dirty, he replied, with surprise, "Do
not you see it is an old one?" Some of the men have shirts;
but the common dress is one or two large blankets, generally
black with dirt, which are thrown over their shoulders in a
very inconvenient and awkward fashion.  A few of the principal
chiefs have decent suits of English clothes; but these
are only worn on great occasions.

December 23rd. -- At a place called Waimate, about fifteen
miles from the Bay of Islands, and midway between the
eastern and western coasts, the missionaries have purchased
some land for agricultural purposes.  I had been introduced
to the Rev. W. Williams, who, upon my expressing a wish,
invited me to pay him a visit there.  Mr. Bushby, the British
resident, offered to take me in his boat by a creek, where I
should see a pretty waterfall, and by which means my
walk would be shortened.  He likewise procured for me a
guide.

Upon asking a neighbouring chief to recommend a man, the
chief himself offered to go; but his ignorance of the value
of money was so complete, that at first he asked how many
pounds I would give him, but afterwards was well contented
with two dollars.  When I showed the chief a very small
bundle, which I wanted carried, it became absolutely necessary
for him to take a slave.  These feelings of pride are
beginning to wear away; but formerly a leading man would
sooner have died, than undergone the indignity of carrying
the smallest burden.  My companion was a light active man,
dressed in a dirty blanket, and with his face completely
tattooed.  He had formerly been a great warrior.  He appeared
to be on very cordial terms with Mr. Bushby; but at
various times they had quarrelled violently.  Mr. Bushby
remarked that a little quiet irony would frequently silence
any one of these natives in their most blustering moments.
This chief has come and harangued Mr. Bushby in a hectoring
manner, saying, "great chief, a great man, a friend
of mine, has come to pay me a visit -- you must give him
something good to eat, some fine presents, etc." Mr. Bushby
has allowed him to finish his discourse, and then has quietly
replied by some answer such as, "What else shall your slave
do for you?" The man would then instantly, with a very
comical expression, cease his braggadocio.

Some time ago, Mr. Bushby suffered a far more serious
attack.  A chief and a party of men tried to break into his
house in the middle of the night, and not finding this so easy,
commenced a brisk firing with their muskets.  Mr. Bushby
was slightly wounded, but the party was at length driven
away.  Shortly afterwards it was discovered who was the
aggressor; and a general meeting of the chiefs was convened
to consider the case.  It was considered by the New Zealanders
as very atrocious, inasmuch as it was a night attack, and
that Mrs. Bushby was lying ill in the house: this latter
circumstance, much to their honour, being considered in all
cases as a protection.  The chiefs agreed to confiscate the
land of the aggressor to the King of England.  The whole
proceeding, however, in thus trying and punishing a chief
was entirely without precedent.  The aggressor, moreover,
lost caste in the estimation of his equals and this was
considered by the British as of more consequence than the
confiscation of his land.

As the boat was shoving off, a second chief stepped into
her, who only wanted the amusement of the passage up and
down the creek.  I never saw a more horrid and ferocious
expression than this man had.  It immediately struck me
I had somewhere seen his likeness: it will be found in
Retzch's outlines to Schiller's ballad of Fridolin, where two
men are pushing Robert into the burning iron furnace.  It
is the man who has his arm on Robert's breast.  Physiognomy
here spoke the truth; this chief had been a notorious
murderer, and was an arrant coward to boot.  At the point
where the boat landed, Mr. Bushby accompanied me a few
hundred yards on the road: I could not help admiring the
cool impudence of the hoary old villain, whom we left lying
in the boat, when he shouted to Mr. Bushby, "Do not you
stay long, I shall be tired of waiting here."

We now commenced our walk.  The road lay along a
well beaten path, bordered on each side by the tall fern,
which covers the whole country.  After travelling some
miles, we came to a little country village, where a few hovels
were collected together, and some patches of ground cultivated
with potatoes.  The introduction of the potato has
been the most essential benefit to the island; it is now much
more used than any native vegetable.  New Zealand is
favoured by one great natural advantage; namely, that the
inhabitants can never perish from famine.  The whole
country abounds with fern: and the roots of this plant, if
not very palatable, yet contain much nutriment.  A native
can always subsist on these, and on the shell-fish, which are
abundant on all parts of the sea-coast.  The villages are
chiefly conspicuous by the platforms which are raised on
four posts ten or twelve feet above the ground, and on
which the produce of the fields is kept secure from all
accidents.

On coming near one of the huts I was much amused by
seeing in due form the ceremony of rubbing, or, as it ought
to be called, pressing noses.  The women, on our first approach,
began uttering something in a most dolorous voice;
they then squatted themselves down and held up their faces;
my companion standing over them, one after another, placed
the bridge of his nose at right angles to theirs, and commenced
pressing.  This lasted rather longer than a cordial
shake of the hand with us, and as we vary the force of the
grasp of the hand in shaking, so do they in pressing.  During
the process they uttered comfortable little grunts, very
much in the same manner as two pigs do, when rubbing
against each other.  I noticed that the slave would press
noses with any one he met, indifferently either before or
after his master the chief.  Although among the savages, the
chief has absolute power of life and death over his slave,
yet there is an entire absence of ceremony between them.
Mr. Burchell has remarked the same thing in Southern Africa,
with the rude Bachapins.  Where civilization has
arrived at a certain point, complex formalities soon arise
between the different grades of society: thus at Tahiti all
were formerly obliged to uncover themselves as low as the
waist in presence of the king.

The ceremony of pressing noses having been duly completed
with all present, we seated ourselves in a circle in the
front of one of the-hovels, and rested there half-an-hour.
All the hovels have nearly the same form and dimensions,
and all agree in being filthily dirty.  They resemble a cow-
shed with one end open, but having a partition a little way
within, with a square hole in it, making a small gloomy
chamber.  In this the inhabitants keep all their property,
and when the weather is cold they sleep there.  They eat,
however, and pass their time in the open part in front.  My
guides having finished their pipes, we continued our walk.
The path led through the same undulating country, the whole
uniformly clothed as before with fern.  On our right hand
we had a serpentine river, the banks of which were fringed
with trees, and here and there on the hill sides there was a
clump of wood.  The whole scene, in spite of its green colour,
had rather a desolate aspect.  The sight of so much fern
impresses the mind with an idea of sterility: this, however,
is not correct; for wherever the fern grows thick and breast-
high, the land by tillage becomes productive.  Some of the
residents think that all this extensive open country originally
was covered with forests, and that it has been cleared by fire.
It is said, that by digging in the barest spots, lumps of the
kind of resin which flows from the kauri pine are frequently
found.  The natives had an evident motive in clearing the
country; for the fern, formerly a staple article of food,
flourishes only in the open cleared tracks.  The almost entire
absence of associated grasses, which forms so remarkable a
feature in the vegetation of this island, may perhaps be
accounted for by the land having been aboriginally covered
with forest-trees.

The soil is volcanic; in several parts we passed over
shaggy lavas, and craters could clearly be distinguished on
several of the neighbouring hills.  Although the scenery is
nowhere beautiful, and only occasionally pretty, I enjoyed
my walk.  I should have enjoyed it more, if my companion,
the chief, had not possessed extraordinary conversational
powers.  I knew only three words: "good," "bad," and
"yes:" and with these I answered all his remarks, without
of course having understood one word he said.  This, however,
was quite sufficient: I was a good listener, an agreeable
person, and he never ceased talking to me.

At length we reached Waimate.  After having passed over
so many miles of an uninhabited useless country, the sudden
appearance of an English farm-house, and its well-dressed
fields, placed there as if by an enchanter's wand, was
exceedingly pleasant.  Mr. Williams not being at home, I received
in Mr. Davies's house a cordial welcome.  After drinking tea
with his family party, we took a stroll about the farm.  At
Waimate there are three large houses, where the missionary
gentlemen, Messrs. Williams, Davies, and Clarke, reside;
and near them are the huts of the native labourers.  On an
adjoining slope, fine crops of barley and wheat were standing
in full ear; and in another part, fields of potatoes and clover.
But I cannot attempt to describe all I saw; there were large
gardens, with every fruit and vegetable which England produces;
and many belonging to a warmer clime.  I may instance
asparagus, kidney beans, cucumbers, rhubarb, apples,
pears, figs, peaches, apricots, grapes, olives, gooseberries,
currants, hops, gorse for fences, and English oaks; also many
kinds of flowers.  Around the farm-yard there were stables,
a thrashing-barn with its winnowing machine, a blacksmith's
forge, and on the ground ploughshares and other tools: in
the middle was that happy mixture of pigs and poultry, lying
comfortably together, as in every English farm-yard.  At the
distance of a few hundred yards, where the water of a little
rill had been dammed up into a pool, there was a large and
substantial water-mill.

All this is very surprising, when it is considered that five
years ago nothing but the fern flourished here.  Moreover,
native workmanship, taught by the missionaries, has effected
this change; -- the lesson of the missionary is the enchanter's
wand.  The house had been built, the windows framed, the
fields ploughed, and even the trees grafted, by a New Zealander.
At the mill, a New Zealander was seen powdered
white with flower, like his brother miller in England.  When
I looked at this whole scene, I thought it admirable.  It was
not merely that England was brought vividly before my
mind; yet, as the evening drew to a close, the domestic
sounds, the fields of corn, the distant undulating country
with its trees might well have been mistaken for our fatherland:
nor was it the triumphant feeling at seeing what Englishmen
could effect; but rather the high hopes thus inspired
for the future progress of this fine island.


Several young men, redeemed by the missionaries from
slavery, were employed on the farm.  They were dressed in
a shirt, jacket, and trousers, and had a respectable appearance.
Judging from one trifling anecdote, I should think
they must be honest.  When walking in the fields, a young
labourer came up to Mr. Davies, and gave him a knife and
gimlet, saying that he had found them on the road, and did
not know to whom they belonged!  These young men and
boys appeared very merry and good-humoured.  In the evening
I saw a party of them at cricket: when I thought of the
austerity of which the missionaries have been accused, I was
amused by observing one of their own sons taking an active
part in the game.  A more decided and pleasing change was
manifested in the young women, who acted as servants within
the houses.  Their clean, tidy, and healthy appearance, like
that of the dairy-maids in England, formed a wonderful
contrast with the women of the filthy hovels in Kororadika.
The wives of the missionaries tried to persuade them not to
be tattooed; but a famous operator having arrived from the
south, they said, "We really must just have a few lines on
our lips; else when we grow old, our lips will shrivel, and we
shall be so very ugly." There is not nearly so much tattooing
as formerly; but as it is a badge of distinction between the
chief and the slave, it will probably long be practised.  So
soon does any train of ideas become habitual, that the
missionaries told me that even in their eyes a plain face looked
mean, and not like that of a New Zealand gentleman.

Late in the evening I went to Mr. Williams's house, where
I passed the night.  I found there a large party of children,
collected together for Christmas Day, and all sitting round
a table at tea.  I never saw a nicer or more merry group; and
to think that this was in the centre of the land of cannibalism,
murder, and all atrocious crimes!  The cordiality and
happiness so plainly pictured in the faces of the little circle,
appeared equally felt by the older persons of the mission.

December 24th. -- In the morning, prayers were read in
the native tongue to the whole family.  After breakfast I
rambled about the gardens and farm.  This was a market-
day, when the natives of the surrounding hamlets bring their
potatoes, Indian corn, or pigs, to exchange for blankets,
tobacco, and sometimes, through the persuasions of the
missionaries, for soap.  Mr. Davies's eldest son, who manages a
farm of his own, is the man of business in the market.  The
children of the missionaries, who came while young to the
island, understand the language better than their parents,
and can get anything more readily done by the natives.

A little before noon Messrs. Williams and Davies walked
with me to a part of a neighbouring forest, to show me the
famous kauri pine.  I measured one of the noble trees, and
found it thirty-one feet in circumference above the roots.
There was another close by, which I did not see, thirty-three
feet; and I heard of one no less than forty feet.  These trees
are remarkable for their smooth cylindrical boles, which run
up to a height of sixty, and even ninety feet, with a nearly
equal diameter, and without a single branch.  The crown
of branches at the summit is out of all proportion small to
the trunk; and the leaves are likewise small compared with
the branches.  The forest was here almost composed of the
kauri; and the largest trees, from the parallelism of their
sides, stood up like gigantic columns of wood.  The timber
of the kauri is the most valuable production of the island;
moreover, a quantity of resin oozes from the bark, which is
sold at a penny a pound to the Americans, but its use was
then unknown.  Some of the New Zealand forest must be
impenetrable to an extraordinary degree.  Mr. Matthews
informed me that one forest only thirty-four miles in width,
and separating two inhabited districts, had only lately, for
the first time, been crossed.  He and another missionary,
each with a party of about fifty men, undertook to open a
road, but it cost more than a fortnight's labour!  In
the woods I saw very few birds.  With regard to animals,
it is a most remarkable fact, that so large an island, extending
over more than 700 miles in latitude, and in many parts
ninety broad, with varied stations, a fine climate, and land
of all heights, from 14,000 feet downwards, with the exception
of a small rat, did not possess one indigenous animal.
The several species of that gigantic genus of birds, the
Deinornis seem here to have replaced mammiferous quadrupeds,
in the same manner as the reptiles still do at the Galapagos
archipelago.  It is said that the common Norway rat, in
the short space of two years, annihilated in this northern
end of the island, the New Zealand species.  In many places
I noticed several sorts of weeds, which, like the rats, I was
forced to own as countrymen.  A leek has overrun whole
districts, and will prove very troublesome, but it was imported
as a favour by a French vessel.  The common dock
is also widely disseminated, and will, I fear, for ever remain
a proof of the rascality of an Englishman, who sold the seeds
for those of the tobacco plant.

On returning from our pleasant walk to the house, I dined
with Mr. Williams; and then, a horse being lent me, I returned
to the Bay of Islands.  I took leave of the missionaries
with thankfulness for their kind welcome, and with feelings
of high respect for their gentlemanlike, useful, and
upright characters.  I think it would be difficult to find
a body of men better adapted for the high office which
they fulfil.

Christmas Day. -- In a few more days the fourth year of
our absence from England will be completed.  Our first
Christmas Day was spent at Plymouth, the second at St.
Martin's Cove, near Cape Horn; the third at Port Desire,
in Patagonia; the fourth at anchor in a wild harbour in the
peninsula of Tres Montes, this fifth here, and the next, I
trust in Providence, will be in England.  We attended divine
service in the chapel of Pahia; part of the service being
read in English, and part in the native language.  Whilst at
New Zealand we did not hear of any recent acts of cannibalism;
but Mr. Stokes found burnt human bones strewed
round a fire-place on a small island near the anchorage; but
these remains of a comfortable banquet might have been
lying there for several years.  It is probable that the moral
state of the people will rapidly improve.  Mr. Bushby mentioned
one pleasing anecdote as a proof of the sincerity of
some, at least, of those who profess Christianity.  One of
his young men left him, who had been accustomed to read
prayers to the rest of the servants.  Some weeks afterwards,
happening to pass late in the evening by an outhouse, he saw
and heard one of his men reading the Bible with difficulty
by the light of the fire, to the others.  After this the party
knelt and prayed: in their prayers they mentioned Mr.
Bushby and his family, and the missionaries, each separately
in his respective district.

December 26th. -- Mr. Bushby offered to take Mr. Sulivan
and myself in his boat some miles up the river to Cawa-
Cawa, and proposed afterwards to walk on to the village of
Waiomio, where there are some curious rocks.  Following
one of the arms of the bay, we enjoyed a pleasant row, and
passed through pretty scenery, until we came to a village,
beyond which the boat could not pass.  From this place a
chief and a party of men volunteered to walk with us to
Waiomio, a distance of four miles.  The chief was at this
time rather notorious from having lately hung one of his
wives and a slave for adultery.  When one of the missionaries
remonstrated with him he seemed surprised, and said
he thought he was exactly following the English method.
Old Shongi, who happened to be in England during the
Queen's trial, expressed great disapprobation at the whole
proceeding: he said he had five wives, and he would rather
cut off all their heads than be so much troubled about one.
Leaving this village, we crossed over to another, seated on
a hill-side at a little distance.  The daughter of a chief, who
was still a heathen, had died there five days before.  The
hovel in which she had expired had been burnt to the ground:
her body being enclosed between two small canoes, was
placed upright on the ground, and protected by an enclosure
bearing wooden images of their gods, and the whole was
painted bright red, so as to be conspicuous from afar.  Her
gown was fastened to the coffin, and her hair being cut off
was cast at its foot.  The relatives of the family had torn
the flesh of their arms, bodies, and faces, so that they were
covered with clotted blood; and the old women looked most
filthy, disgusting objects.  On the following day some of the
officers visited this place, and found the women still howling
and cutting themselves.

We continued our walk, and soon reached Waiomio.  Here
there are some singular masses of limestone, resembling
ruined castles.  These rocks have long served for burial
places, and in consequence are held too sacred to be approached.
One of the young men, however, cried out, "Let
us all be brave," and ran on ahead; but when within a hundred
yards, the whole party thought better of it, and stopped
short.  With perfect indifference, however, they allowed us
to examine the whole place.  At this village we rested some
hours, during which time there was a long discussion with
Mr. Bushby, concerning the right of sale of certain lands.
One old man, who appeared a perfect genealogist, illustrated
the successive possessors by bits of stick driven into the
ground.  Before leaving the houses a little basketful of
roasted sweet potatoes was given to each of our party; and
we all, according to the custom, carried them away to eat
on the road.  I noticed that among the women employed in
cooking, there was a man-slave: it must be a humiliating
thing for a man in this warlike country to be employed in
doing that which is considered as the lowest woman's work.
Slaves are not allowed to go to war; but this perhaps can
hardly be considered as a hardship.  I heard of one poor
wretch who, during hostilities, ran away to the opposite
party; being met by two men, he was immediately seized;
but as they could not agree to whom he should belong, each
stood over him with a stone hatchet, and seemed determined
that the other at least should not take him away alive.  The
poor man, almost dead with fright, was only saved by the
address of a chief's wife.  We afterwards enjoyed a pleasant
walk back to the boat, but did not reach the ship till late in
the evening.

December 30th. -- In the afternoon we stood out of the
Bay of Islands, on our course to Sydney.  I believe we were
all glad to leave New Zealand.  It is not a pleasant place.
Amongst the natives there is absent that charming simplicity
which is found in Tahiti; and the greater part of the English
are the very refuse of society.  Neither is the country itself
attractive.  I look back but to one bright spot, and that is
Waimate, with its Christian inhabitants.



CHAPTER XIX

AUSTRALIA

Sydney -- Excursion to Bathurst -- Aspect of the Woods -- Party
of Natives -- Gradual Extinction of the Aborigines -- Infection
generated by associated Men in health -- Blue Mountains -- View
of the grand gulf-like Valleys -- Their origin and formation --
Bathurst, general civility of the Lower Orders -- State of
Society -- Van Diemen's Land -- Hobart Town -- Aborigines all
banished -- Mount Wellington  -- King George's Sound --
Cheerless Aspect of the Country -- Bald Head, calcareous casts
of branches of Trees -- Party of Natives -- Leave Australia.


JANUARY 12th, 1836. -- Early in the morning a light air
carried us towards the entrance of Port Jackson.  Instead
of beholding a verdant country, interspersed with
fine houses, a straight line of yellowish cliff brought to our
minds the coast of Patagonia.  A solitary lighthouse, built of
white stone, alone told us that we were near a great and
populous city.  Having entered the harbour, it appears fine
and spacious, with cliff-formed shores of horizontally
stratified sandstone.  The nearly level country is covered with
thin scrubby trees, bespeaking the curse of sterility.
Proceeding further inland, the country improves: beautiful
villas and nice cottages are here and there scattered along the
beach.  In the distance stone houses, two and three stories high,
and windmills standing on the edge of a bank, pointed out to us
the neighbourhood of the capital of Australia.

At last we anchored within Sydney Cove.  We found the
little basin occupied by many large ships, and surrounded by
warehouses.  In the evening I walked through the town, and
returned full of admiration at the whole scene.  It is a most
magnificent testimony to the power of the British nation.
Here, in a less promising country, scores of years have done
many more times more than an equal number of centuries
have effected in South America.  My first feeling was to
congratulate myself that I was born an Englishman.  Upon
seeing more of the town afterwards, perhaps my admiration
fell a little; but yet it is a fine town.  The streets are
regular, broad, clean, and kept in excellent order; the houses
are of a good size, and the shops well furnished.  It may be
faithfully compared to the large suburbs which stretch out from
London and a few other great towns in England; but not even near
London or Birmingham is there an appearance of such rapid
growth.  The number of large houses and other buildings just
finished was truly surprising; nevertheless, every one
complained of the high rents and difficulty in procuring a
house.  Coming from South America, where in the towns every man
of property is known, no one thing surprised me more than
not being able to ascertain at once to whom this or that
carriage belonged.

I hired a man and two horses to take me to Bathurst, a
village about one hundred and twenty miles in the interior,
and the centre of a great pastoral district.  By this means I
hoped to gain a general idea of the appearance of the country.
On the morning of the 16th (January) I set out on my excursion.
The first stage took us to Paramatta, a small country
town, next to Sydney in importance.  The roads were excellent,
and made upon the MacAdam principle, whinstone having
been brought for the purpose from the distance of several
miles.  In all respects there was a close resemblance to England:
perhaps the alehouses here were more numerous.  The iron gangs,
or parties of convicts who have committed here some offense,
appeared the least like England: they were working in chains,
under the charge of sentries with loaded arms.

The power which the government possesses, by means
of forced labour, of at once opening good roads throughout
the country, has been, I believe, one main cause of the early
prosperity of this colony.  I slept at night at a very
comfortable inn at Emu ferry, thirty-five miles from Sydney,
and near the ascent of the Blue Mountains.  This line of
road is the most frequented, and has been the longest inhabited
of any in the colony.  The whole land is enclosed
with high railings, for the farmers have not succeeded in
rearing hedges.  There are many substantial houses and good
cottages scattered about; but although considerable pieces of
land are under cultivation, the greater part yet remains as
when first discovered.

The extreme uniformity of the vegetation is the most
remarkable feature in the landscape of the greater part of
New South Wales.  Everywhere we have an open woodland,
the ground being partially covered with a very thin pasture,
with little appearance of verdure.  The trees nearly all
belong to one family, and mostly have their leaves placed in
a vertical, instead of as in Europe, in a nearly horizontal
position: the foliage is scanty, and of a peculiar pale green
tint, without any gloss.  Hence the woods appear light and
shadowless: this, although a loss of comfort to the traveller
under the scorching rays of summer, is of importance to the
farmer, as it allows grass to grow where it otherwise would
not.  The leaves are not shed periodically: this character
appears common to the entire southern hemisphere, namely,
South America, Australia, and the Cape of Good Hope.  The
inhabitants of this hemisphere, and of the intertropical
regions, thus lose perhaps one of the most glorious, though
to our eyes common, spectacles in the world -- the first
bursting into full foliage of the leafless tree.  They may,
however, say that we pay dearly for this by having the land
covered with mere naked skeletons for so many months.  This is
too true but our senses thus acquire a keen relish for the
exquisite green of the spring, which the eyes of those living
within the tropics, sated during the long year with the gorgeous
productions of those glowing climates, can never experience.
The greater number of the trees, with the exception
of some of the Blue-gums, do not attain a large size;
but they grow tall and tolerably straight, and stand well
apart.  The bark of some of the Eucalypti falls annually, or
hangs dead in long shreds which swing about with the wind,
and give to the woods a desolate and untidy appearance.  I
cannot imagine a more complete contrast, in every respect,
than between the forests of Valdivia or Chiloe, and the
woods of Australia.

At sunset, a party of a score of the black aborigines passed
by, each carrying, in their accustomed manner, a bundle of
spears and other weapons.  By giving a leading young man a
shilling, they were easily detained, and threw their spears for
my amusement.  They were all partly clothed, and several
could speak a little English: their countenances were good-
humoured and pleasant, and they appeared far from being
such utterly degraded beings as they have usually been
represented.  In their own arts they are admirable.  A cap being
fixed at thirty yards distance, they transfixed it with a spear,
delivered by the throwing-stick with the rapidity of an arrow
from the bow of a practised archer.  In tracking animals or
men they show most wonderful sagacity; and I heard of several
of their remarks which manifested considerable acuteness.
They will not, however, cultivate the ground, or build
houses and remain stationary, or even take the trouble of
tending a flock of sheep when given to them.  On the whole
they appear to me to stand some few degrees higher in the
scale of civilization than the Fuegians.

It is very curious thus to see in the midst of a civilized
people, a set of harmless savages wandering about without
knowing where they shall sleep at night, and gaining their
livelihood by hunting in the woods.  As the white man has
travelled onwards, he has spread over the country belonging
to several tribes.  These, although thus enclosed by one common
people, keep up their ancient distinctions, and sometimes
go to war with each other.  In an engagement which
took place lately, the two parties most singularly chose the
centre of the village of Bathurst for the field of battle.  This
was of service to the defeated side, for the runaway warriors
took refuge in the barracks.

The number of aborigines is rapidly decreasing.  In my
whole ride, with the exception of some boys brought up by
Englishmen, I saw only one other party.  This decrease, no
doubt, must be partly owing to the introduction of spirits, to
European diseases (even the milder ones of which, such as
the measles, [1] prove very destructive), and to the gradual
extinction of the wild animals.  It is said that numbers of
their children invariably perish in very early infancy from
the effects of their wandering life; and as the difficulty of
procuring food increases, so must their wandering habits
increase; and hence the population, without any apparent
deaths from famine, is repressed in a manner extremely
sudden compared to what happens in civilized countries,
where the father, though in adding to his labour he may injure
himself, does not destroy his offspring.

Besides the several evident causes of destruction, there
appears to be some more mysterious agency generally at
work.  Wherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue
the aboriginal.  We may look to the wide extent of the
Americas, Polynesia, the Cape of Good Hope, and Australia,
and we find the same result.  Nor is it the white man alone
that thus acts the destroyer; the Polynesian of Malay extraction
has in parts of the East Indian archipelago, thus driven
before him the dark-coloured native.  The varieties of man
seem to act on each other in the same way as different species
of animals -- the stronger always extirpating the weaker.  It
was melancholy at New Zealand to hear the fine energetic
natives saying that they knew the land was doomed to pass
from their children.  Every one has heard of the inexplicable
reduction of the population in the beautiful and healthy island
of Tahiti since the date of Captain Cook's voyages: although
in that case we might have expected that it would have been
increased; for infanticide, which formerly prevailed to so
extraordinary a degree, has ceased; profligacy has greatly
diminished, and the murderous wars become less frequent.

The Rev. J. Williams, in his interesting work, [2] says, that
the first intercourse between natives and Europeans, "is
invariably attended with the introduction of fever, dysentery,
or some other disease, which carries off numbers of the people."
Again he affirms, "It is certainly a fact, which cannot
be controverted, that most of the diseases which have raged
in the islands during my residence there, have been introduced
by ships; [3] and what renders this fact remarkable is,
that there might be no appearance of disease among the crew
of the ship which conveyed this destructive importation."
This statement is not quite so extraordinary as it at first
appears; for several cases are on record of the most malignant
fevers having broken out, although the parties themselves,
who were the cause, were not affected.  In the early
part of the reign of George III., a prisoner who had been
confined in a dungeon, was taken in a coach with four constables
before a magistrate; and although the man himself
was not ill, the four constables died from a short putrid
fever; but the contagion extended to no others.  From these
facts it would almost appear as if the effluvium of one set
of men shut up for some time together was poisonous when
inhaled by others; and possibly more so, if the men be of
different races.  Mysterious as this circumstance appears to
be, it is not more surprising than that the body of one's
fellow-creature, directly after death, and before putrefaction
has commenced, should often be of so deleterious a quality,
that the mere puncture from an instrument used in its
dissection, should prove fatal.

17th. -- Early in the morning we passed the Nepean in a
ferry-boat.  The river, although at this spot both broad and
deep, had a very small body of running water.  Having
crossed a low piece of land on the opposite side, we reached
the slope of the Blue Mountains.  The ascent is not steep,
the road having been cut with much care on the side of a
sandstone cliff.  On the summit an almost level plain extends,
which, rising imperceptibly to the westward, at last attains
a height of more than 3000 feet.  From so grand a title as
Blue Mountains, and from their absolute altitude, I expected
to have seen a bold chain of mountains crossing the country;
but instead of this, a sloping plain presents merely an
inconsiderable front to the low land near the coast.  From
this first slope, the view of the extensive woodland to the
east was striking, and the surrounding trees grew bold and
lofty.  But when once on the sandstone platform, the scenery
becomes exceedingly monotonous; each side of the road is
bordered by scrubby trees of the never-failing Eucalyptus
family; and with the exception of two or three small inns,
there are no houses or cultivated land: the road, moreover,
is solitary; the most frequent object being a bullock-waggon,
piled up with bales of wool.

In the middle of the day we baited our horses at a little
inn, called the Weatherboard.  The country here is elevated
2800 feet above the sea.  About a mile and a half from this
place there is a view exceedingly well worth visiting.  Following
down a little valley and its tiny rill of water, an
immense gulf unexpectedly opens through the trees which
border the pathway, at the depth of perhaps 1500 feet.
Walking on a few yards, one stands on the brink of a vast
precipice, and below one sees a grand bay or gulf, for I know
not what other name to give it, thickly covered with forest.
The point of view is situated as if at the head of a bay, the
line of cliff diverging on each side, and showing headland
behind headland, as on a bold sea-coast.  These cliffs are
composed of horizontal strata of whitish sandstone; and
are so absolutely vertical, that in many places a person
standing on the edge and throwing down a stone, can see it
strike the trees in the abyss below.  So unbroken is the line
of cliff, that in order to reach the foot of the waterfall,
formed by this little stream, it is said to be necessary to go
sixteen miles round.  About five miles distant in front,
another line of cliff extends, which thus appears completely
to encircle the valley; and hence the name of bay is justified,
as applied to this grand amphitheatrical depression.  If we
imagine a winding harbour, with its deep water surrounded
by bold cliff-like shores, to be laid dry, and a forest to
spring up on its sandy bottom, we should then have the
appearance and structure here exhibited.  This kind of view was
to me quite novel, and extremely magnificent.

In the evening we reached the Blackheath.  The sandstone
plateau has here attained the height of 3400 feet; and
is covered, as before, with the same scrubby woods.  From
the road, there were occasional glimpses into a profound
valley, of the same character as the one described; but from
the steepness and depth of its sides, the bottom was scarcely
ever to be seen.  The Blackheath is a very comfortable inn,
kept by an old soldier; and it reminded me of the small inns
in North Wales.

18th. -- Very early in the morning, I walked about three
miles to see Govett's Leap; a view of a similar character
with that near the Weatherboard, but perhaps even more
stupendous.  So early in the day the gulf was filled with a
thin blue haze, which, although destroying the general effect
of the view added to the apparent depth at which the forest
was stretched out beneath our feet.  These valleys, which so
long presented an insuperable barrier to the attempts of the
most enterprising of the colonists to reach the interior, are
most remarkable.  Great arm-like bays, expanding at their
upper ends, often branch from the main valleys and penetrate
the sandstone platform; on the other hand, the platform
often sends promontories into the valleys, and even
leaves in them great, almost insulated, masses.  To descend
into some of these valleys, it is necessary to go round twenty
miles; and into others, the surveyors have only lately
penetrated, and the colonists have not yet been able to drive in
their cattle.  But the most remarkable feature in their structure
is, that although several miles wide at their heads, they
generally contract towards their mouths to such a degree
as to become impassable.  The Surveyor-General, Sir T.
Mitchell, [4] endeavoured in vain, first walking and then by
crawling between the great fallen fragments of sandstone,
to ascend through the gorge by which the river Grose joins
the Nepean, yet the valley of the Grose in its upper part,
as I saw, forms a magnificent level basin some miles in
width, and is on all sides surrounded by cliffs, the summits
of which are believed to be nowhere less than 3000 feet
above the level of the sea.  When cattle are driven into the
valley of the Wolgan by a path (which I descended), partly
natural and partly made by the owner of the land, they cannot
escape; for this valley is in every other part surrounded
by perpendicular cliffs, and eight miles lower down, it
contracts from an average width of half a mile, to a mere
chasm, impassable to man or beast.  Sir T. Mitchell states
that the great valley of the Cox river with all its branches,
contracts, where it unites with the Nepean, into a gorge
2200 yards in width, and about 1000 feet in depth.  Other
similar cases might have been added.

The first impression, on seeing the correspondence of the
horizontal strata on each side of these valleys and great
amphitheatrical depressions, is that they have been hollowed
out, like other valleys, by the action of water; but when one
reflects on the enormous amount of stone, which on this
view must have been removed through mere gorges or
chasms, one is led to ask whether these spaces may not have
subsided.  But considering the form of the irregularly
branching valleys, and of the narrow promontories projecting
into them from the platforms, we are compelled to abandon
this notion.  To attribute these hollows to the present alluvial
action would be preposterous; nor does the drainage
from the summit-level always fall, as I remarked near the
Weatherboard, into the head of these valleys, but into one
side of their bay-like recesses.  Some of the inhabitants
remarked to me that they never viewed one of those bay-like
recesses, with the headlands receding on both hands, without
being struck with their resemblance to a bold sea-coast.  This
is certainly the case; moreover, on the present coast of New
South Wales, the numerous, fine, widely-branching harbours,
which are generally connected with the sea by a narrow
mouth worn through the sandstone coast-cliffs, varying from
one mile in width to a quarter of a mile, present a likeness,
though on a miniature scale, to the great valleys of the
interior.  But then immediately occurs the startling difficulty,
why has the sea worn out these great, though circumscribed
depressions on a wide platform, and left mere gorges at the
openings, through which the whole vast amount of triturated
matter must have been carried away?  The only light I can
throw upon this enigma, is by remarking that banks of the
most irregular forms appear to be now forming in some seas,
as in parts of the West Indies and in the Red Sea, and that
their sides are exceedingly steep.  Such banks, I have been
led to suppose, have been formed by sediment heaped by
strong currents on an irregular bottom.  That in some cases
the sea, instead of spreading out sediment in a uniform sheet,
heaps it round submarine rocks and islands, it is hardly
possible to doubt, after examining the charts of the West
Indies; and that the waves have power to form high and
precipitous cliffs, even in land-locked harbours, I have noticed
in many parts of South America.  To apply these ideas to the
sandstone platforms of New South Wales, I imagine that the
strata were heaped by the action of strong currents, and of
the undulations of an open sea, on an irregular bottom; and
that the valley-like spaces thus left unfilled had their steeply
sloping flanks worn into cliffs, during a slow elevation of
the land; the worn-down sandstone being removed, either at
the time when the narrow gorges were cut by the retreating
sea, or subsequently by alluvial action.


Soon after leaving the Blackheath, we descended from the
sandstone platform by the pass of Mount Victoria.  To effect
this pass, an enormous quantity of stone has been cut
through; the design, and its manner of execution, being
worthy of any line of road in England.  We now entered
upon a country less elevated by nearly a thousand feet, and
consisting of granite.  With the change of rock, the vegetation
improved, the trees were both finer and stood farther
apart; and the pasture between them was a little greener and
more plentiful.  At Hassan's Walls, I left the high road,
and made a short detour to a farm called Walerawang; to
the superintendent of which I had a letter of introduction
from the owner in Sydney.  Mr. Browne had the kindness to
ask me to stay the ensuing day, which I had much pleasure
in doing.  This place offers an example of one of the large
farming, or rather sheep-grazing establishments of the
colony.  Cattle and horses are, however, in this case rather
more numerous than usual, owing to some of the valleys
being swampy and producing a coarser pasture.  Two or
three flat pieces of ground near the house were cleared and
cultivated with corn, which the harvest-men were now reaping:
but no more wheat is sown than sufficient for the annual
support of the labourers employed on the establishment.  The
usual number of assigned convict-servants here is about
forty, but at the present time there were rather more.  Although
the farm was well stocked with every necessary,
there was an apparent absence of comfort; and not one
single woman resided here.  The sunset of a fine day will
generally cast an air of happy contentment on any scene;
but here, at this retired farm-house, the brightest tints on
the surrounding woods could not make me forget that forty
hardened, profligate men were ceasing from their daily
labours, like the slaves from Africa, yet without their holy
claim for compassion.

Early on the next morning, Mr. Archer, the joint superintendent,
had the kindness to take me out kangaroo-hunting.
We continued riding the greater part of the day, but had
very bad sport, not seeing a kangaroo, or even a wild dog.
The greyhounds pursued a kangaroo rat into a hollow tree,
out of which we dragged it: it is an animal as large as a
rabbit, but with the figure of a kangaroo.  A few years since
this country abounded with wild animals; but now the emu
is banished to a long distance, and the kangaroo is become
scarce; to both the English greyhound has been highly
destructive.  It may be long before these animals are altogether
exterminated, but their doom is fixed.  The aborigines are
always anxious to borrow the dogs from the farm-houses:
the use of them, the offal when an animal is killed, and some
milk from the cows, are the peace-offerings of the settlers,
who push farther and farther towards the interior.  The
thoughtless aboriginal, blinded by these trifling advantages,
is delighted at the approach of the white man, who seems
predestined to inherit the country of his children.

Although having poor sport, we enjoyed a pleasant ride.
The woodland is generally so open that a person on horseback
can gallop through it.  It is traversed by a few flat-
bottomed valleys, which are green and free from trees: in
such spots the scenery was pretty like that of a park.  In the
whole country I scarcely saw a place without the marks of a
fire; whether these had been more or less recent -- whether
the stumps were more or less black, was the greatest change
which varied the uniformity, so wearisome to the traveller's
eye.  In these woods there are not many birds; I saw, however,
some large flocks of the white cockatoo feeding in a
corn-field, and a few most beautiful parrots; crows, like our
jackdaws were not uncommon, and another bird something
like the magpie.  In the dusk of the evening I took a stroll
along a chain of ponds, which in this dry country represented
the course of a river, and had the good fortune to see several
of the famous Ornithorhynchus paradoxus.  They were
diving and playing about the surface of the water, but
showed so little of their bodies, that they might easily have
been mistaken for water-rats.  Mr. Browne shot one: certainly
it is a most extraordinary animal; a stuffed specimen does not
at all give a good idea of the appearance of the head and beak
when fresh; the latter becoming hard and contracted. [5]

20th. -- A long day's ride to Bathurst.  Before joining the
highroad we followed a mere path through the forest; and
the country, with the exception of a few squatters' huts, was
very solitary.  We experienced this day the sirocco-like wind
of Australia, which comes from the parched deserts of the
interior.  Clouds of dust were travelling in every direction;
and the wind felt as if it had passed over a fire.  I afterwards
heard that the thermometer out of doors had stood at
119 degs., and in a closed room at 96 degs.  In the afternoon we
came in view of the downs of Bathurst.  These undulating but
nearly smooth plains are very remarkable in this country,
from being absolutely destitute of trees.  They support only
a thin brown pasture.  We rode some miles over this country,
and then reached the township of Bathurst, seated in the
middle of what may be called either a very broad valley, or
narrow plain.  I was told at Sydney not to form too bad an
opinion of Australia by judging of the country from the
roadside, nor too good a one from Bathurst; in this latter
respect, I did not feel myself in the least danger of being
prejudiced.  The season, it must be owned, had been one of great
drought, and the country did not wear a favourable aspect;
although I understand it was incomparably worse two or
three months before.  The secret of the rapidly growing
prosperity of Bathurst is, that the brown pasture which
appears to the stranger's eye so wretched, is excellent for
sheep-grazing.  The town stands, at the height of 2200 feet
above the sea, on the banks of the Macquarie.  This is one of
the rivers flowing into the vast and scarcely known interior.
The line of watershed, which divides the inland streams from
those on the coast, has a height of about 3000 feet, and runs
in a north and south direction at the distance of from eighty
to a hundred miles from the sea-side.  The Macquarie figures
in the map as a respectable river, and it is the largest of
those draining this part of the water-shed; yet to my surprise
I found it a mere chain of ponds, separated from each other
by spaces almost dry.  Generally a small stream is running;
and sometimes there are high and impetuous floods.  Scanty
as the supply of the water is throughout this district, it
becomes still scantier further inland.

22nd. -- I commenced my return, and followed a new road
called Lockyer's Line, along which the country is rather more
hilly and picturesque.  This was a long day's ride; and the
house where I wished to sleep was some way off the road,
and not easily found.  I met on this occasion, and indeed on
all others, a very general and ready civility among the lower
orders, which, when one considers what they are, and what
they have been, would scarcely have been expected.  The
farm where I passed the night, was owned by two young
men who had only lately come out, and were beginning a
settler's life.  The total want of almost every comfort was
not attractive; but future and certain prosperity was before
their eyes, and that not far distant.

The next day we passed through large tracts of country in
flames, volumes of smoke sweeping across the road.  Before
noon we joined our former road, and ascended Mount Victoria.
I slept at the Weatherboard, and before dark took
another walk to the amphitheatre.  On the road to Sydney
I spent a very pleasant evening with Captain King at Dunheved;
and thus ended my little excursion in the colony of
New South Wales.

Before arriving here the three things which interested me
most were -- the state of society amongst the higher classes,
the condition of the convicts, and the degree of attraction
sufficient to induce persons to emigrate.  Of course, after
so very short a visit, one's opinion is worth scarcely anything;
but it is as difficult not to form some opinion, as it is
to form a correct judgment.  On the whole, from what I
heard, more than from what I saw, I was disappointed in the
state of society.  The whole community is rancorously
divided into parties on almost every subject.  Among those
who, from their station in life, ought to be the best, many
live in such open profligacy that respectable people cannot
associate with them.  There is much jealousy between the
children of the rich emancipist and the free settlers, the
former being pleased to consider honest men as interlopers.
The whole population, poor and rich, are bent on acquiring
wealth: amongst the higher orders, wool and sheep-grazing
form the constant subject of conversation.  There are many
serious drawbacks to the comforts of a family, the chief of
which, perhaps, is being surrounded by convict servants.
How thoroughly odious to every feeling, to be waited on by
a man who the day before, perhaps, was flogged, from your
representation, for some trifling misdemeanor.  The female
servants are of course, much worse: hence children learn the
vilest expressions, and it is fortunate, if not equally vile
ideas.

On the other hand, the capital of a person, without any
trouble on his part, produces him treble interest to what it
will in England; and with care he is sure to grow rich.  The
luxuries of life are in abundance, and very little dearer than
in England, and most articles of food are cheaper.  The
climate is splendid, and perfectly healthy; but to my mind
its charms are lost by the uninviting aspect of the country.
Settlers possess a great advantage in finding their sons of
service when very young.  At the age of from sixteen to
twenty, they frequently take charge of distant farming stations.
This, however, must happen at the expense of their
boys associating entirely with convict servants.  I am not
aware that the tone of society has assumed any peculiar
character; but with such habits, and without intellectual
pursuits, it can hardly fail to deteriorate.  My opinion is
such, that nothing but rather sharp necessity should compel
me to emigrate.

The rapid prosperity and future prospects of this colony
are to me, not understanding these subjects, very puzzling.
The two main exports are wool and whale-oil, and to both
of these productions there is a limit.  The country is totally
unfit for canals, therefore there is a not very distant point,
beyond which the land-carriage of wool will not repay the
expense of shearing and tending sheep.  Pasture everywhere
is so thin that settlers have already pushed far into the
interior: moreover, the country further inland becomes extremely
poor.  Agriculture, on account of the droughts, can
never succeed on an extended scale: therefore, so far as I
can see, Australia must ultimately depend upon being the
centre of commerce for the southern hemisphere, and perhaps
on her future manufactories.  Possessing coal, she
always has the moving power at hand.  From the habitable
country extending along the coast, and from her English
extraction, she is sure to be a maritime nation.  I formerly
imagined that Australia would rise to be as grand and powerful
a country as North America, but now it appears to me
that such future grandeur is rather problematical.

With respect to the state of the convicts, I had still fewer
opportunities of judging than on other points.  The first
question is, whether their condition is at all one of
punishment: no one will maintain that it is a very severe one.
This, however, I suppose, is of little consequence as long as
it continues to be an object of dread to criminals at home.
The corporeal wants of the convicts are tolerably well supplied:
their prospect of future liberty and comfort is not
distant, and, after good conduct, certain.  A "ticket of
leave," which, as long as a man keeps clear of suspicion as
well as of crime, makes him free within a certain district, is
given upon good conduct, after years proportional to the
length of the sentence; yet with all this, and overlooking
the previous imprisonment and wretched passage out, I
believe the years of assignment are passed away with discontent
and unhappiness.  As an intelligent man remarked to
me, the convicts know no pleasure beyond sensuality, and in
this they are not gratified.  The enormous bribe which Government
possesses in offering free pardons, together with the
deep horror of the secluded penal settlements, destroys
confidence between the convicts, and so prevents crime.  As to a
sense of shame, such a feeling does not appear to be known,
and of this I witnessed some very singular proofs.  Though
it is a curious fact, I was universally told that the character
of the convict population is one of arrant cowardice: not
unfrequently some become desperate, and quite indifferent as
to life, yet a plan requiring cool or continued courage is
seldom put into execution.  The worst feature in the whole
case is, that although there exists what may be called a legal
reform, and comparatively little is committed which the law
can touch, yet that any moral reform should take place
appears to be quite out of the question.  I was assured by
well-informed people, that a man who should try to improve,
could not while living with other assigned servants; -- his
life would be one of intolerable misery and persecution.  Nor
must the contamination of the convict-ships and prisons, both
here and in England, be forgotten.  On the whole, as a place
of punishment, the object is scarcely gained; as a real system
of reform it has failed, as perhaps would every other plan;
but as a means of making men outwardly honest, -- of converting
vagabonds, most useless in one hemisphere, into
active citizens of another, and thus giving birth to a new
and splendid country -- a grand centre of civilization -- it has
succeeded to a degree perhaps unparalleled in history.


30th. -- The Beagle sailed for Hobart Town in Van Diemen's
Land.  On the 5th of February, after a six days' passage,
of which the first part was fine, and the latter very cold
and squally, we entered the mouth of Storm Bay: the weather
justified this awful name.  The bay should rather be called
an estuary, for it receives at its head the waters of the
Derwent.  Near the mouth, there are some extensive basaltic
platforms; but higher up the land becomes mountainous, and
is covered by a light wood.  The lower parts of the hills
which skirt the bay are cleared; and the bright yellow fields
of corn, and dark green ones of potatoes, appear very luxuriant.
Late in the evening we anchored in the snug cove,
on the shores of which stands the capital of Tasmania.  The
first aspect of the place was very inferior to that of Sydney;
the latter might be called a city, this is only a town.  It
stands at the base of Mount Wellington, a mountain 3100
feet high, but of little picturesque beauty; from this source,
however, it receives a good supply of water.  Round the cove
there are some fine warehouses and on one side a small fort.
Coming from the Spanish settlements, where such magnificent
care has generally been paid to the fortifications, the
means of defence in these colonies appeared very contemptible.
Comparing the town with Sydney, I was chiefly struck
with the comparative fewness of the large houses, either
built or building.  Hobart Town, from the census of 1835,
contained 13,826 inhabitants, and the whole of Tasmania 36,505.

All the aborigines have been removed to an island in
Bass's Straits, so that Van Diemen's Land enjoys the great
advantage of being free from a native population.  This
most cruel step seems to have been quite unavoidable, as
the only means of stopping a fearful succession of robberies,
burnings, and murders, committed by the blacks; and which
sooner or later would have ended in their utter destruction.
I fear there is no doubt, that this train of evil and its
consequences, originated in the infamous conduct of some of
our countrymen.  Thirty years is a short period, in which to
have banished the last aboriginal from his native island, --
and that island nearly as large as Ireland.  The correspondence
on this subject, which took place between the government
at home and that of Van Diemen's Land, is very interesting.
Although numbers of natives were shot and taken prisoners
in the skirmishing, which was going on at intervals for several
years; nothing seems fully to have impressed them with
the idea of our overwhelming power, until the whole island,
in 1830, was put under martial law, and by proclamation the
whole population commanded to assist in one great attempt
to secure the entire race.  The plan adopted was nearly similar
to that of the great hunting-matches in India: a line was
formed reaching across the island, with the intention of
driving the natives into a _cul-de-sac_ on Tasman's peninsula.
The attempt failed; the natives, having tied up their dogs,
stole during one night through the lines.  This is far from
surprising, when their practised senses, and usual manner
of crawling after wild animals is considered.  I have been
assured that they can conceal themselves on almost bare
ground, in a manner which until witnessed is scarcely credible;
their dusky bodies being easily mistaken for the blackened
stumps which are scattered all over the country.  I was
told of a trial between a party of Englishmen and a native,
who was to stand in full view on the side of a bare hill; if the
Englishmen closed their eyes for less than a minute, he
would squat down, and then they were never able to distinguish
him from the surrounding stumps.  But to return to
the hunting-match; the natives understanding this kind of
warfare, were terribly alarmed, for they at once perceived
the power and numbers of the whites.  Shortly afterwards
a party of thirteen belonging to two tribes came in; and,
conscious of their unprotected condition, delivered themselves
up in despair.  Subsequently by the intrepid exertions
of Mr. Robinson, an active and benevolent man, who
fearlessly visited by himself the most hostile of the natives,
the whole were induced to act in a similar manner.  They
were then removed to an island, where food and clothes
were provided them.  Count Strzelecki states, [6] that "at the
epoch of their deportation in 1835, the number of natives
amounted to 210.  In 1842, that is, after the interval of seven
years, they mustered only fifty-four individuals; and, while
each family of the interior of New South Wales, uncontaminated
by contact with the whites, swarms with children, those
of Flinders' Island had during eight years an accession of
only fourteen in number!"

The Beagle stayed here ten days, and in this time I made
several pleasant little excursions, chiefly with the object of
examining the geological structure of the immediate
neighbourhood.  The main points of interest consist, first in
some highly fossiliferous strata, belonging to the Devonian or
Carboniferous period; secondly, in proofs of a late small rise
of the land; and lastly, in a solitary and superficial patch of
yellowish limestone or travertin, which contains numerous
impressions of leaves of trees, together with land-shells, not
now existing.  It is not improbable that this one small quarry
includes the only remaining record of the vegetation of Van
Diemen's Land during one former epoch.

The climate here is damper than in New South Wales,
and hence the land is more fertile.  Agriculture flourishes;
the cultivated fields look well, and the gardens abound with
thriving vegetables and fruit-trees.  Some of the farmhouses,
situated in retired spots, had a very attractive appearance.
The general aspect of the vegetation is similar to
that of Australia; perhaps it is a little more green and
cheerful; and the pasture between the trees rather more
abundant.  One day I took a long walk on the side of the bay
opposite to the town: I crossed in a steamboat, two of which
are constantly plying backwards and forwards.  The machinery
of one of these vessels was entirely manufactured in
this colony, which, from its very foundation, then numbered
only three and thirty years!  Another day I ascended Mount
Wellington; I took with me a guide, for I failed in a first
attempt, from the thickness of the wood.  Our guide, however,
was a stupid fellow, and conducted us to the southern
and damp side of the mountain, where the vegetation was
very luxuriant; and where the labour of the ascent, from the
number of rotten trunks, was almost as great as on a mountain
in Tierra del Fuego or in Chiloe.  It cost us five and a
half hours of hard climbing before we reached the summit.
In many parts the Eucalypti grew to a great size, and composed
a noble forest.  In some of the dampest ravines, tree-
ferns flourished in an extraordinary manner; I saw one
which must have been at least twenty feet high to the base
of the fronds, and was in girth exactly six feet.  The fronds
forming the most elegant parasols, produced a gloomy shade,
like that of the first hour of the night.  The summit of the
mountain is broad and flat, and is composed of huge angular
masses of naked greenstone.  Its elevation is 3100 feet above
the level of the sea.  The day was splendidly clear, and we
enjoyed a most extensive view; to the north, the country
appeared a mass of wooded mountains, of about the same height
with that on which we were standing, and with an equally
tame outline: to the south the broken land and water, forming
many intricate bays, was mapped with clearness before
us.  After staying some hours on the summit, we found a
better way to descend, but did not reach the Beagle till eight
o'clock, after a severe day's work.

February 7th. -- The Beagle sailed from Tasmania, and,
on the 6th of the ensuing month, reached King George's
Sound, situated close to the S. W. corner of Australia.  We
stayed there eight days; and we did not during our voyage
pass a more dull and uninteresting time.  The country,
viewed from an eminence, appears a woody plain, with here
and there rounded and partly bare hills of granite protruding.
One day I went out with a party, in hopes of seeing a
kangaroo hunt, and walked over a good many miles of country.
Everywhere we found the soil sandy, and very poor;
it supported either a coarse vegetation of thin, low brushwood
and wiry grass, or a forest of stunted trees.  The
scenery resembled that of the high sandstone platform of the
Blue Mountains; the Casuarina (a tree somewhat resembling
a Scotch fir) is, however, here in greater number, and
the Eucalyptus in rather less.  In the open parts there were
many grass-trees,  -- a plant which, in appearance, has some
affinity with the palm; but, instead of being surmounted by
a crown of noble fronds, it can boast merely of a tuft of
very coarse grass-like leaves.  The general bright green colour
of the brushwood and other plants, viewed from a distance,
seemed to promise fertility.  A single walk, however, was enough
to dispel such an illusion; and he who thinks with me will never
wish to walk again in so uninviting a country.

One day I accompanied Captain Fitz Roy to Bald Head;
the place mentioned by so many navigators, where some imagined
that they saw corals, and others that they saw petrified
trees, standing in the position in which they had grown.
According to our view, the beds have been formed by the
wind having heaped up fine sand, composed of minute rounded
particles of shells and corals, during which process
branches and roots of trees, together with many land-shells,
became enclosed.  The whole then became consolidated by
the percolation of calcareous matter; and the cylindrical
cavities left by the decaying of the wood, were thus also
filled up with a hard pseudo-stalactical stone.  The weather
is now wearing away the softer parts, and in consequence
the hard casts of the roots and branches of the trees project
above the surface, and, in a singularly deceptive manner,
resemble the stumps of a dead thicket.

A large tribe of natives, called the White Cockatoo men
happened to pay the settlement a visit while we were there.
These men, as well as those of the tribe belonging to King
George's Sound, being tempted by the offer of some tubs of
rice and sugar, were persuaded to hold a "corrobery," or
great dancing-party.  As soon as it grew dark, small fires
were lighted, and the men commenced their toilet, which
consisted in painting themselves white in spots and lines.
As soon as all was ready, large fires were kept blazing,
round which the women and children were collected as spectators;
the Cockatoo and King George's men formed two distinct
parties, and generally danced in answer to each other.
The dancing consisted in their running either sideways or in
Indian file into an open space, and stamping the ground with
great force as they marched together.  Their heavy footsteps
were accompanied by a kind of grunt, by beating their
clubs and spears together, and by various other gesticulations,
such as extending their arms and wriggling their
bodies.  It was a most rude, barbarous scene, and, to our
ideas, without any sort of meaning; but we observed that
the black women and children watched it with the greatest
pleasure.  Perhaps these dances originally represented actions,
such as wars and victories; there was one called the Emu
dance, in which each man extended his arm in a bent manner,
like the neck of that bird.  In another dance, one man
imitated the movements of a kangaroo grazing in the woods,
whilst a second crawled up, and pretended to spear him.
When both tribes mingled in the dance, the ground trembled
with the heaviness of their steps, and the air resounded with
their wild cries.  Every one appeared in high spirits, and the
group of nearly naked figures, viewed by the light of the
blazing fires, all moving in hideous harmony, formed a perfect
display of a festival amongst the lowest barbarians.  In
Tierra del Fuego, we have beheld many curious scenes in
savage life, but never, I think, one where the natives were
in such high spirits, and so perfectly at their ease.  After
the dancing was over, the whole party formed a great circle
on the ground, and the boiled rice and sugar was distributed,
to the delight of all.

After several tedious delays from clouded weather, on the
14th of March, we gladly stood out of King George's Sound
on our course to Keeling Island.  Farewell, Australia! you
are a rising child, and doubtless some day will reign a great
princess in the South: but you are too great and ambitious
for affection, yet not great enough for respect.  I leave your
shores without sorrow or regret.

[1] It is remarkable how the same disease is modified in
different climates.  At the little island of St. Helena the
introduction of scarlet fever is dreaded as a plague.  In some
countries, foreigners and natives are as differently affected by
certain contagious disorders as if they had been different
animals; of which fact some instances have occurred in Chile;
and, according to Humboldt, in Mexico (Polit. Essay, New Spain,
vol. iv.).

[2] Narrative of Missionary Enterprise, p. 282.

[3] Captain Beechey (chap. iv., vol. i.) states that the
inhabitants of Pitcairn Island are firmly convinced that after
the arrival of every ship they suffer cutaneous and other
disorders.  Captain Beechey attributes this to the change of diet
during the time of the visit.  Dr. Macculloch (Western Isles,
vol. ii. p. 32) says: "It is asserted, that on the arrival of a
stranger (at St. Kilda) all the inhabitants, in the common
phraseology, catch a cold." Dr. Macculloch considers the whole
case, although often previously affirmed, as ludicrous.  He adds,
however, that "the question was put by us to the inhabitants who
unanimously agreed in the story." In Vancouver's Voyage, there
is a somewhat similar statement with respect to Otaheite.  Dr.
Dieffenbach, in a note to his translation of the Journal, states
that the same fact is universally believed by the inhabitants of
the Chatham Islands, and in parts of New Zealand.  It is
impossible that such a belief should have become universal in
the northern hemisphere, at the Antipodes, and in the Pacific,
without some good foundation.  Humboldt (Polit. Essay on King of
New Spain, vol. iv.) says, that the great epidemics of Panama
and Callao are "marked" by the arrival of ships from Chile,
because the people from that temperate region, first experience
the fatal effects of the torrid zones.  I may add, that I have
heard it stated in Shropshire, that sheep, which have been
imported from vessels, although themselves in a healthy
condition, if placed in the same fold with others, frequently
produce sickness in the flock.

[4] Travels in Australia, vol. i. p. 154.  I must express my
obligation to Sir T. Mitchell, for several interesting personal
communications on the subject of these great valleys of New
South Wales.

[5] I was interested by finding here the hollow conical pitfall
of the lion-ant, or some other insect; first a fly fell down the
treacherous slope and immediately disappeared; then came a large
but unwary ant; its struggles to escape being very violent,
those curious little jets of sand, described by Kirby and Spence
(Entomol., vol. i. p. 425) as being flirted by the insect's
tail, were promptly directed against the expected victim.  But
the ant enjoyed a better fate than the fly, and escaped the
fatal jaws which lay concealed at the base of the conical
hollow.  This Australian pitfall was only about half the size of
that made by the European lion-ant.

[6] Physical Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen's
Land, p. 354.



CHAPTER XX

KEELING ISLAND: -- CORAL FORMATIONS

Keeling Island -- Singular appearance -- Scanty Flora --
Transport of Seeds -- Birds and Insects -- Ebbing and flowing
Springs -- Fields of dead Coral -- Stones transported in the
roots of Trees -- Great Crab  -- Stinging Corals -- Coral
eating Fish -- Coral Formations -- Lagoon Islands, or Atolls --
Depth at which reef-building Corals can live -- Vast Areas
interspersed with low Coral Islands -- Subsidence of their
foundations -- Barrier Reefs -- Fringing Reefs -- Conversion of
Fringing Reefs into Barrier Reefs, and into Atolls -- Evidence
of changes in Level -- Breaches in Barrier Reefs -- Maldiva
Atolls, their peculiar structure -- Dead and submerged Reefs --
Areas of subsidence and elevation -- Distribution of Volcanoes
-- Subsidence slow, and vast in amount


APRIL 1st. --  We arrived in view of the Keeling or Cocos
Islands, situated in the Indian Ocean, and about six hundred
miles distant from the coast of Sumatra.  This is one of the
lagoon-islands (or atolls) of coral formation, similar to
those in the Low Archipelago which we passed near.  When
the ship was in the channel at the entrance, Mr. Liesk,
an English resident, came off in his boat.  The history
of the inhabitants of this place, in as few words as
possible, is as follows.  About nine years ago, Mr. Hare,
a worthless character, brought from the East Indian
archipelago a number of Malay slaves, which now including
children, amount to more than a hundred.  Shortly afterwards,
Captain Ross, who had before visited these islands in his
merchant-ship, arrived from England, bringing
with him his family and goods for settlement along with
him came Mr. Liesk, who had been a mate in his vessel.
The Malay slaves soon ran away from the islet on which
Mr. Hare was settled, and joined Captain Ross's party.  Mr.
Hare upon this was ultimately obliged to leave the place.

The Malays are now nominally in a state of freedom, and
certainly are so, as far as regards their personal treatment;
but in most other points they are considered as slaves.  From
their discontented state, from the repeated removals from
islet to islet, and perhaps also from a little mismanagement,
things are not very prosperous.  The island has no domestic
quadruped, excepting the pig, and the main vegetable production
is the cocoa-nut.  The whole prosperity of the place
depends on this tree: the only exports being oil from the nut,
and the nuts themselves, which are taken to Singapore and
Mauritius, where they are chiefly used, when grated, in making
curries.  On the cocoa-nut, also, the pigs, which are
loaded with fat, almost entirely subsist, as do the ducks and
poultry.  Even a huge land-crab is furnished by nature with
the means to open and feed on this most useful production.

The ring-formed reef of the lagoon-island is surmounted
in the greater part of its length by linear islets.  On the
northern or leeward side, there is an opening through which
vessels can pass to the anchorage within.  On entering, the
scene was very curious and rather pretty; its beauty, however,
entirely depended on the brilliancy of the surrounding
colours.  The shallow, clear, and still water of the lagoon,
resting in its greater part on white sand, is, when illumined
by a vertical sun, of the most vivid green.  This brilliant
expanse, several miles in width, is on all sides divided, either
by a line of snow-white breakers from the dark heaving
waters of the ocean, or from the blue vault of heaven by
the strips of land, crowned by the level tops of the cocoa-nut
trees.  As a white cloud here and there affords a pleasing
contrast with the azure sky, so in the lagoon, bands of
living coral darken the emerald green water.

The next morning after anchoring, I went on shore on
Direction Island.  The strip of dry land is only a few hundred
yards in width; on the lagoon side there is a white calcareous
beach, the radiation from which under this sultry
climate was very oppressive; and on the outer coast, a solid
broad flat of coral-rock served to break the violence of the
open sea.  Excepting near the lagoon, where there is some
sand, the land is entirely composed of rounded fragments of
coral.  In such a loose, dry, stony soil, the climate of the
intertropical regions alone could produce a vigorous vegetation.
On some of the smaller islets, nothing could be more
elegant than the manner in which the young and full-grown
cocoa-nut trees, without destroying each other's symmetry,
were mingled into one wood.  A beach of glittering white
sand formed a border to these fairy spots.

I will now give a sketch of the natural history of these
islands, which, from its very paucity, possesses a peculiar
interest.  The cocoa-nut tree, at first glance, seems to
compose the whole wood; there are however, five or six
other trees.  One of these grows to a very large size, but
from the extremes of softness of its wood, is useless; another
sort affords excellent timber for ship-building.  Besides the
trees, the number of plants is exceedingly limited, and consists
of insignificant weeds.  In my collection, which includes,
I believe, nearly the perfect Flora, there are twenty
species, without reckoning a moss, lichen, and fungus.  To
this number two trees must be added; one of which was not
in flower, and the other I only heard of.  The latter is a
solitary tree of its kind, and grows near the beach, where,
without doubt, the one seed was thrown up by the waves.  A
Guilandina also grows on only one of the islets.  I do not
include in the above list the sugar-cane, banana, some other
vegetables, fruit-trees, and imported grasses.  As the islands
consist entirely of coral, and at one time must have existed
as mere water-washed reefs, all their terrestrial productions
must have been transported here by the waves of the sea.
In accordance with this, the Florula has quite the character
of a refuge for the destitute: Professor Henslow informs
me that of the twenty species nineteen belong to different
genera, and these again to no less than sixteen families! [1]

In Holman's [2] Travels an account is given, on the authority
of Mr. A. S. Keating, who resided twelve months on these
islands, of the various seeds and other bodies which have
been known to have been washed on shore.  "Seeds and
plants from Sumatra and Java have been driven up by the
surf on the windward side of the islands.  Among them have
been found the Kimiri, native of Sumatra and the peninsula
of Malacca; the cocoa-nut of Balci, known by its shape and
size; the Dadass, which is planted by the Malays with the
pepper-vine, the latter intwining round its trunk, and
supporting itself by the prickles on its stem; the soap-tree;
the castor-oil plant; trunks of the sago palm; and various kinds
of seeds unknown to the Malays settled on the islands.
These are all supposed to have been driven by the N. W.
monsoon to the coast of New Holland, and thence to these
islands by the S. E. trade-wind.  Large masses of Java teak
and Yellow wood have also been found, besides immense
trees of red and white cedar, and the blue gumwood of New
Holland, in a perfectly sound condition.  All the hardy seeds,
such as creepers, retain their germinating power, but the
softer kinds, among which is the mangostin, are destroyed
in the passage.  Fishing-canoes, apparently from Java, have
at times been washed on shore." It is interesting thus to
discover how numerous the seeds are, which, coming from
several countries, are drifted over the wide ocean.  Professor
Henslow tells me, he believes that nearly all the plants
which I brought from these islands, are common littoral
species in the East Indian archipelago.  From the direction,
however, of the winds and currents, it seems scarcely possible
that they could have come here in a direct line.  If,
as suggested with much probability by Mr. Keating, they
were first carried towards the coast of New Holland, and
thence drifted back together with the productions of that
country, the seeds, before germinating, must have travelled
between 1800 and 2400 miles.

Chamisso, [3] when describing the Radack Archipelago, situated
in the western part of the Pacific, states that "the sea
brings to these islands the seeds and fruits of many trees,
most of which have yet not grown here.  The greater part
of these seeds appear to have not yet lost the capability of
growing."

It is also said that palms and bamboos from somewhere
in the torrid zone, and trunks of northern firs, are
washed on shore: these firs must have come from an immense
distance.  These facts are highly interesting.  It cannot
be doubted that if there were land-birds to pick up the
seeds when first cast on shore, and a soil better adapted for
their growth than the loose blocks of coral, that the most
isolated of the lagoon-islands would in time possess a far
more abundant Flora than they now have.

The list of land animals is even poorer than that of the
plants.  Some of the islets are inhabited by rats, which were
brought in a ship from the Mauritius, wrecked here.  These
rats are considered by Mr. Waterhouse as identical with the
English kind, but they are smaller, and more brightly coloured.
There are no true land-birds, for a snipe and a rail
(Rallus Phillippensis), though living entirely in the dry
herbage, belong to the order of Waders.  Birds of this order
are said to occur on several of the small low islands in the
Pacific.  At Ascension, where there is no land-bird, a rail
(Porphyrio simplex) was shot near the summit of the mountain,
and it was evidently a solitary straggler.  At Tristan
d'Acunha, where, according to Carmichael, there are only
two land-birds, there is a coot.  From these facts I believe
that the waders, after the innumerable web-footed species,
are generally the first colonists of small isolated islands.  I
may add, that whenever I noticed birds, not of oceanic
species, very far out at sea, they always belonged to this
order; and hence they would naturally become the earliest
colonists of any remote point of land.

Of reptiles I saw only one small lizard.  Of insects I took
pains to collect every kind.  Exclusive of spiders, which were
numerous, there were thirteen species. [4] Of these, one only
was a beetle.  A small ant swarmed by thousands under the
loose dry blocks of coral, and was the only true insect which
was abundant.  Although the productions of the land are
thus scanty, if we look to the waters of the surrounding sea,
the number of organic beings is indeed infinite.  Chamisso
has described [5] the natural history of a lagoon-island in the
Radack Archipelago; and it is remarkable how closely its
inhabitants, in number and kind, resemble those of Keeling
Island.  There is one lizard and two waders, namely, a snipe
and curlew.  Of plants there are nineteen species, including
a fern; and some of these are the same with those growing
here, though on a spot so immensely remote, and in a different
ocean.

The long strips of land, forming the linear islets, have
been raised only to that height to which the surf can throw
fragments of coral, and the wind heap up calcareous sand.
The solid flat of coral rock on the outside, by its breadth,
breaks the first violence of the waves, which otherwise, in a
day, would sweep away these islets and all their productions.
The ocean and the land seem here struggling for mastery:
although terra firma has obtained a footing, the denizens of
the water think their claim at least equally good.  In every
part one meets hermit crabs of more than one species, [6]
carrying on their backs the shells which they have stolen
from the neighbouring beach.  Overhead, numerous gannets,
frigate-birds, and terns, rest on the trees; and the wood, from
the many nests and from the smell of the atmosphere, might
be called a sea-rookery.  The gannets, sitting on their rude
nests, gaze at one with a stupid yet angry air.  The noddies,
as their name expresses, are silly little creatures.  But there
is one charming bird: it is a small, snow-white tern, which
smoothly hovers at the distance of a few feet above one's
head, its large black eye scanning, with quiet curiosity, your
expression.  Little imagination is required to fancy that so
light and delicate a body must be tenanted by some wandering
fairy spirit.

Sunday, April 3rd. -- After service I accompanied Captain
Fitz Roy to the settlement, situated at the distance of some
miles, on the point of an islet thickly covered with tall
cocoa-nut trees.  Captain Ross and Mr. Liesk live in a large
barn-like house open at both ends, and lined with mats made of
woven bark.  The houses of the Malays are arranged along
the shore of the lagoon.  The whole place had rather a desolate
aspect, for there were no gardens to show the signs of
care and cultivation.  The natives belong to different islands
in the East Indian archipelago, but all speak the same language:
we saw the inhabitants of Borneo, Celebes, Java, and
Sumatra.  In colour they resemble the Tahitians, from whom
they do not widely differ in features.  Some of the women,
however, show a good deal of the Chinese character.  I liked
both their general expressions and the sound of their voices.
They appeared poor, and their houses were destitute of
furniture; but it was evident, from the plumpness of the little
children, that cocoa-nuts and turtle afford no bad sustenance.

On this island the wells are situated, from which ships
obtain water.  At first sight it appears not a little remarkable
that the fresh water should regularly ebb and flow with the
tides; and it has even been imagined, that sand has the power
of filtering the salt from the sea-water.  These ebbing wells
are common on some of the low islands in the West Indies.
The compressed sand, or porous coral rock, is permeated like
a sponge with the salt water, but the rain which falls on the
surface must sink to the level of the surrounding sea, and
must accumulate there, displacing an equal bulk of the salt
water.  As the water in the lower part of the great sponge-
like coral mass rises and falls with the tides, so will the
water near the surface; and this will keep fresh, if the mass
be sufficiently compact to prevent much mechanical admixture;
but where the land consists of great loose blocks of
coral with open interstices, if a well be dug, the water, as I
have seen, is brackish.

After dinner we stayed to see a curious half superstitious
scene acted by the Malay women.  A large wooden spoon
dressed in garments, and which had been carried to the grave
of a dead man, they pretend becomes inspired at the full of
the moon, and will dance and jump about.  After the proper
preparations, the spoon, held by two women, became convulsed,
and danced in good time to the song of the surrounding
children and women.  It was a most foolish spectacle;
but Mr. Liesk maintained that many of the Malays believed
in its spiritual movements.  The dance did not commence till
the moon had risen, and it was well worth remaining to behold
her bright orb so quietly shining through the long arms
of the cocoa-nut trees as they waved in the evening breeze.
These scenes of the tropics are in themselves so delicious,
that they almost equal those dearer ones at home, to which
we are bound by each best feeling of the mind.

The next day I employed myself in examining the very
interesting, yet simple structure and origin of these islands.
The water being unusually smooth, I waded over the outer
flat of dead rock as far as the living mounds of coral, on
which the swell of the open sea breaks.  In some of the
gullies and hollows there were beautiful green and other
coloured fishes, and the form and tints of many of the zoophytes
were admirable.  It is excusable to grow enthusiastic over
the infinite numbers of organic beings with which the sea of
the tropics, so prodigal of life, teems; yet I must confess I
think those naturalists who have described, in well-known
words, the submarine grottoes decked with a thousand beauties,
have indulged in rather exuberant language.

April 6th. -- I accompanied Captain Fitz Roy to an island
at the head of the lagoon: the channel was exceedingly
intricate, winding through fields of delicately branched corals.
We saw several turtle and two boats were then employed in
catching them.  The water was so clear and shallow, that although
at first a turtle quickly dives out of sight, yet in a
canoe or boat under sail, the pursuers after no very long
chase come up to it.  A man standing ready in the bow, at
this moment dashes through the water upon the turtle's back;
then clinging with both hands by the shell of its neck, he is
carried away till the animal becomes exhausted and is secured.
It was quite an interesting chase to see the two boats
thus doubling about, and the men dashing head foremost
into the water trying to seize their prey.  Captain Moresby
informs me that in the Chagos archipelago in this same
ocean, the natives, by a horrible process, take the shell from
the back of the living turtle.  "It is covered with burning
charcoal, which causes the outer shell to curl upwards, it is
then forced off with a knife, and before it becomes cold
flattened between boards.  After this barbarous process the
animal is suffered to regain its native element, where, after
a certain time, a new shell is formed; it is, however, too
thin to he of any service, and the animal always appears
languishing and sickly."

When we arrived at the head of the lagoon, we crossed a
narrow islet, and found a great surf breaking on the windward
coast.  I can hardly explain the reason, but there is to
my mind much grandeur in the view of the outer shores of
these lagoon-islands.  There is a simplicity in the barrier-like
beach, the margin of green bushes and tall cocoa-nuts,
the solid flat of dead coral-rock, strewed here and there
with great loose fragments, and the line of furious breakers,
all rounding away towards either hand.  The ocean
throwing its waters over the broad reef appears an invincible,
all-powerful enemy; yet we see it resisted, and even
conquered, by means which at first seem most weak and
inefficient.  It is not that the ocean spares the rock of coral;
the great fragments scattered over the reef, and heaped on
the beach, whence the tall cocoa-nut springs, plainly bespeak
the unrelenting power of the waves.  Nor are any
periods of repose granted.  The long swell caused by the
gentle but steady action of the trade-wind, always blowing
in one direction over a wide area, causes breakers, almost
equalling in force those during a gale of wind in the temperate
regions, and which never cease to rage.  It is impossible
to behold these waves without feeling a conviction that
an island, though built of the hardest rock, let it be porphyry,
granite, or quartz, would ultimately yield and be demolished
by such an irresistible power.  Yet these low, insignificant
coral-islets stand and are victorious: for here another power,
as an antagonist, takes part in the contest.  The organic forces
separate the atoms of carbonate of lime, one by one, from
the foaming breakers, and unite them into a symmetrical
structure.  Let the hurricane tear up its thousand huge
fragments; yet what will that tell against the accumulated
labour of myriads of architects at work night and day, month
after month?  Thus do we see the soft and gelatinous body of a
polypus, through the agency of the vital laws, conquering
the great mechanical power of the waves of an ocean which
neither the art of man nor the inanimate works of nature
could successfully resist.

We did not return on board till late in the evening, for we
stayed a long time in the lagoon, examining the fields of
coral and the gigantic shells of the chama, into which, if a
man were to put his hand, he would not, as long as the animal
lived, be able to withdraw it.  Near the head of the
lagoon I was much surprised to find a wide area, considerably
more than a mile square, covered with a forest of delicately
branching corals, which, though standing upright,
were all dead and rotten.  At first I was quite at a loss to
understand the cause afterwards it occurred to me that it
was owing to the following rather curious combination of
circumstances.  It should, however, first be stated, that corals
are not able to survive even a short exposure in the air to
the sun's rays, so that their upward limit of growth is
determined by that of lowest water at spring tides.  It appears,
from some old charts, that the long island to windward was
formerly separated by wide channels into several islets; this
fact is likewise indicated by the trees being younger on these
portions.  Under the former condition of the reef, a strong
breeze, by throwing more water over the barrier, would tend
to raise the level of the lagoon.  Now it acts in a directly
contrary manner; for the water within the lagoon not only
is not increased by currents from the outside, but is itself
blown outwards by the force of the wind.  Hence it is observed,
that the tide near the head of the lagoon does not
rise so high during a strong breeze as it does when it is
calm.  This difference of level, although no doubt very small,
has, I believe, caused the death of those coral-groves, which
under the former and more open condition of the outer reef
has attained the utmost possible limit of upward growth.

A few miles north of Keeling there is another small atoll,
the lagoon of which is nearly filled up with coral-mud.  Captain
Ross found embedded in the conglomerate on the outer
coast, a well-rounded fragment of greenstone, rather larger
than a man's head: he and the men with him were so much
surprised at this, that they brought it away and preserved it
as a curiosity.  The occurrence of this one stone, where
every other particle of matter is calcareous, certainly is very
puzzling.  The island has scarcely ever been visited, nor is it
probable that a ship had been wrecked there.  From the absence
of any better explanation, I came to the conclusion that
it must have come entangled in the roots of some large tree:
when, however, I considered the great distance from the
nearest land, the combination of chances against a stone thus
being entangled, the tree washed into the sea, floated so far,
then landed safely, and the stone finally so embedded as to
allow of its discovery, I was almost afraid of imagining a
means of transport apparently so improbable.  It was therefore
with great interest that I found Chamisso, the justly
distinguished naturalist who accompanied Kotzebue, stating
that the inhabitants of the Radack archipelago, a group of
lagoon-islands in the midst of the Pacific, obtained stones
for sharpening their instruments by searching the roots of
trees which are cast upon the beach.  It will be evident that
this must have happened several times, since laws have been
established that such stones belong to the chief, and a
punishment is inflicted on any one who attempts to steal them.
When the isolated position of these small islands in the
midst of a vast ocean -- their great distance from any land
excepting that of coral formation, attested by the value
which the inhabitants, who are such bold navigators, attach
to a stone of any kind, [7] -- and the slowness of the currents
of the open sea, are all considered, the occurrence of pebbles
thus transported does appear wonderful.  Stones may often
be thus carried; and if the island on which they are stranded
is constructed of any other substance besides coral, they
would scarcely attract attention, and their origin at least
would never be guessed.  Moreover, this agency may long
escape discovery from the probability of trees, especially
those loaded with stones, floating beneath the surface.  In
the channels of Tierra del Fuego large quantities of drift
timber are cast upon the beach, yet it is extremely rare to
meet a tree swimming on the water.  These facts may possibly
throw light on single stones, whether angular or rounded,
occasionally found embedded in fine sedimentary masses.

During another day I visited West Islet, on which the
vegetation was perhaps more luxuriant than on any other.
The cocoa-nut trees generally grow separate, but here the
young ones flourished beneath their tall parents, and formed
with their long and curved fronds the most shady arbours.
Those alone who have tried it, know how delicious it is to
be seated in such shade, and drink the cool pleasant fluid
of the cocoa-nut.  In this island there is a large bay-like
space, composed of the finest white sand: it is quite level
and is only covered by the tide at high water; from this
large bay smaller creeks penetrate the surrounding woods.
To see a field of glittering white sand, representing water,
with the cocoa-nut trees extending their tall and waving
trunks around the margin, formed a singular and very pretty
view.

I have before alluded to a crab which lives on the cocoa-nuts;
it is very common on all parts of the dry land, and
grows to a monstrous size: it is closely allied or identical
with the Birgos latro.  The front pair of legs terminate in
very strong and heavy pincers, and the last pair are fitted
with others weaker and much narrower.  It would at first
be thought quite impossible for a crab to open a strong
cocoa-nut covered with the husk; but Mr. Liesk assures me
that he has repeatedly seen this effected.  The crab begins
by tearing the husk, fibre by fibre, and always from that
end under which the three eye-holes are situated; when this
is completed, the crab commences hammering with its heavy
claws on one of the eye-holes till an opening is made.  Then
turning round its body, by the aid of its posterior and narrow
pair of pincers, it extracts the white albuminous substance.
I think this is as curious a case of instinct as ever
I heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between
two objects apparently so remote from each other in the
scheme of nature, as a crab and a cocoa-nut tree.  The
Birgos is diurnal in its habits; but every night it is said to
pay a visit to the sea, no doubt for the purpose of moistening
its branchiae.  The young are likewise hatched, and live for
some time, on the coast.  These crabs inhabit deep burrows,
which they hollow out beneath the roots of trees; and where
they accumulate surprising quantities of the picked fibres
of the cocoa-nut husk, on which they rest as on a bed.  The
Malays sometimes take advantage of this, and collect the
fibrous mass to use as junk.  These crabs are very good to
eat; moreover, under the tail of the larger ones there is a
mass of fat, which, when melted, sometimes yields as much
as a quart bottle full of limpid oil.  It has been stated by
some authors that the Birgos crawls up the cocoa-nut trees
for the purpose of stealing the nuts: I very much doubt the
possibility of this; but with the Pandanus [8] the task would be
very much easier.  I was told by Mr. Liesk that on these
islands the Birgos lives only on the nuts which have fallen
to the ground.

Captain Moresby informs me that this crab inhabits the
Chagos and Seychelle groups, but not the neighbouring Maldiva
archipelago.  It formerly abounded at Mauritius, but
only a few small ones are now found there.  In the Pacific,
this species, or one with closely allied habits, is said [9] to
inhabit a single coral island, north of the Society group.  To
show the wonderful strength of the front pair of pincers, I
may mention, that Captain Moresby confined one in a strong
tin-box, which had held biscuits, the lid being secured with
wire; but the crab turned down the edges and escaped.  In
turning down the edges, it actually punched many small
holes quite through the tin!

I was a good deal surprised by finding two species of
coral of the genus Millepora (M. complanata and alcicornis),
possessed of the power of stinging.  The stony branches or
plates, when taken fresh from the water, have a harsh feel
and are not slimy, although possessing a strong and disagreeable
smell.  The stinging property seems to vary in
different specimens: when a piece was pressed or rubbed on
the tender skin of the face or arm, a pricking sensation was
usually caused, which came on after the interval of a second,
and lasted only for a few minutes.  One day, however, by
merely touching my face with one of the branches, pain was
instantaneously caused; it increased as usual after a few
seconds, and remaining sharp for some minutes, was perceptible
for half an hour afterwards.  The sensation was as
bad as that from a nettle, but more like that caused by the
Physalia or Portuguese man-of-war.  Little red spots were
produced on the tender skin of the arm, which appeared as if
they would have formed watery pustules, but did not.  M.
Quoy mentions this case of the Millepora; and I have heard
of stinging corals in the West Indies.  Many marine animals
seem to have this power of stinging: besides the Portuguese
man-of-war, many jelly-fish, and the Aplysia or sea-slug
of the Cape de Verd Islands, it is stated in the voyage
of the Astrolabe, that an Actinia or sea-anemone, as well as
a flexible coralline allied to Sertularia, both possess this
means of offence or defence.  In the East Indian sea, a
stinging sea-weed is said to be found.

Two species of fish, of the genus Scarus, which are common
here, exclusively feed on coral: both are coloured of a
splendid bluish-green, one living invariably in the lagoon,
and the other amongst the outer breakers.  Mr. Liesk assured
us, that he had repeatedly seen whole shoals grazing with
their strong bony jaws on the tops of the coral branches: I
opened the intestines of several, and found them distended
with yellowish calcareous sandy mud.  The slimy disgusting
Holuthuriae (allied to our star-fish), which the Chinese
gourmands are so fond of, also feed largely, as I am informed by
Dr. Allan, on corals; and the bony apparatus within their
bodies seems well adapted for this end.  These Holuthuriae,
the fish, the numerous burrowing shells, and nereidous
worms, which perforate every block of dead coral, must be
very efficient agents in producing the fine white mud which
lies at the bottom and on the shores of the lagoon.  A portion,
however, of this mud, which when wet resembled
pounded chalk, was found by Professor Ehrenberg to be
partly composed of siliceous-shielded infusoria.

April 12th. -- In the morning we stood out of the lagoon
on our passage to the Isle of France.  I am glad we have
visited these islands: such formations surely rank high
amongst the wonderful objects of this world.  Captain Fitz
Roy found no bottom with a line 7200 feet in length, at the
distance of only 2200 yards from the shore; hence this island
forms a lofty submarine mountain, with sides steeper even
than those of the most abrupt volcanic cone.  The saucer-shaped
summit is nearly ten miles across; and every single
atom, [10] from the least particle to the largest fragment of
rock, in this great pile, which however is small compared
with very many other lagoon-islands, bears the stamp of
having been subjected to organic arrangement.  We feel surprise
when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the
Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant
are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains
of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute
and tender animals!  This is a wonder which does not at
first strike the eye of the body, but, after reflection,
the eye of reason.

I will now give a very brief account of the three great
classes of coral-reefs; namely, Atolls, Barrier, and Fringing-
reefs, and will explain my views [11] on their formation.  Almost
every voyager who has crossed the Pacific has expressed
his unbounded astonishment at the lagoon-islands, or
as I shall for the future call them by their Indian name of
atolls, and has attempted some explanation.  Even as long
ago as the year 1605, Pyrard de Laval well exclaimed, "C'est

[picture]

une merveille de voir chacun de ces atollons, environne d'un
grand banc de pierre tout autour, n'y ayant point d'artifice
humain." The accompanying sketch of Whitsunday Island
in the Pacific, copied from, Capt. Beechey's admirable Voyage,
gives but a faint idea of the singular aspect of an atoll:
it is one of the smallest size, and has its narrow islets united
together in a ring.  The immensity of the ocean, the fury of
the breakers, contrasted with the lowness of the land and the
smoothness of the bright green water within the lagoon, can
hardly be imagined without having been seen.

The earlier voyagers fancied that the coral-building animals
instinctively built up their great circles to afford themselves
protection in the inner parts; but so far is this from
the truth, that those massive kinds, to whose growth on the
exposed outer shores the very existence of the reef depends,
cannot live within the lagoon, where other delicately-branching
kinds flourish.  Moreover, on this view, many species
of distinct genera and families are supposed to combine for
one end; and of such a combination, not a single instance
can be found in the whole of nature.  The theory that has
been most generally received is, that atolls are based on
submarine craters; but when we consider the form and size of
some, the number, proximity, and relative positions of others,
this idea loses its plausible character: thus Suadiva atoll is
44 geographical miles in diameter in one line, by 34 miles in
another line; Rimsky is 54 by 20 miles across, and it has a
strangely sinuous margin; Bow atoll is 30 miles long, and on
an average only 6 in width; Menchicoff atoll consists of three
atolls united or tied together.  This theory, moreover, is
totally inapplicable to the northern Maldiva atolls in the
Indian Ocean (one of which is 88 miles in length, and between 10
and 20 in breadth), for they are not bounded like ordinary
atolls by narrow reefs, but by a vast number of separate
little atolls; other little atolls rising out of the great
central lagoon-like spaces.  A third and better theory was
advanced by Chamisso, who thought that from the corals growing
more vigorously where exposed to the open sea, as undoubtedly is
the case, the outer edges would grow up from the general
foundation before any other part, and that this would account
for the ring or cup-shaped structure.  But we shall
immediately see, that in this, as well as in the crater-theory,
a most important consideration has been overlooked, namely,
on what have the reef-building corals, which cannot live at
a great depth, based their massive structures?

Numerous soundings were carefully taken by Captain Fitz
Roy on the steep outside of Keeling atoll, and it was found
that within ten fathoms, the prepared tallow at the bottom
of the lead, invariably came up marked with the impression
of living corals, but as perfectly clean as if it had been
dropped on a carpet of turf; as the depth increased, the
impressions became less numerous, but the adhering particles
of sand more and more numerous, until at last it was evident
that the bottom consisted of a smooth sandy layer: to carry
on the analogy of the turf, the blades of grass grew thinner
and thinner, till at last the soil was so sterile, that nothing
sprang from it.  From these observations, confirmed by many
others, it may be safely inferred that the utmost depth at
which corals can construct reefs is between 20 and 30 fathoms.
Now there are enormous areas in the Pacific and Indian
Ocean, in which every single island is of coral formation,
and is raised only to that height to which the waves can
throw up fragments, and the winds pile up sand.  Thus
Radack group of atolls is an irregular square, 520 miles long
and 240 broad; the Low Archipelago is elliptic-formed, 840
miles in its longer, and 420 in its shorter axis: there are
other small groups and single low islands between these two
archipelagoes, making a linear space of ocean actually more
than 4000 miles in length, in which not one single island
rises above the specified height.  Again, in the Indian Ocean
there is a space of ocean 1500 miles in length, including
three archipelagoes, in which every island is low and of
coral formation.  From the fact of the reef-building corals
not living at great depths, it is absolutely certain that
throughout these vast areas, wherever there is now an atoll,
a foundation must have originally existed within a depth of
from 20 to 30 fathoms from the surface.  It is improbable in
the highest degree that broad, lofty, isolated, steep-sided
banks of sediment, arranged in groups and lines hundreds of
leagues in length, could have been deposited in the central
and profoundest parts of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, at
an immense distance from any continent, and where the
water is perfectly limpid.  It is equally improbable that the
elevatory forces should have uplifted throughout the above
vast areas, innumerable great rocky banks within 20 to 30
fathoms, or 120 to 180 feet, of the surface of the sea, and
not one single point above that level; for where on the whole
surface of the globe can we find a single chain of mountains,
even a few hundred miles in length, with their many summits
rising within a few feet of a given level, and not one
pinnacle above it?  If then the foundations, whence the atoll-
building corals sprang, were not formed of sediment, and if
they were not lifted up to the required level, they must of
necessity have subsided into it; and this at once solves the
difficulty.  For as mountain after mountain, and island after
island, slowly sank beneath the water, fresh bases would be
successively afforded for the growth of the corals.  It is
impossible here to enter into all the necessary details, but I
venture to defy [12] any one to explain in any other manner
how it is possible that numerous islands should be distributed
throughout vast areas -- all the islands being low -- all being
built of corals, absolutely requiring a foundation within a
limited depth from the surface.

Before explaining how atoll-formed reefs acquire their
peculiar structure, we must turn to the second great class,
namely, Barrier-reefs.  These either extend in straight lines
in front of the shores of a continent or of a large island, or
they encircle smaller islands; in both cases, being separated
from the land by a broad and rather deep channel of water,
analogous to the lagoon within an atoll.  It is remarkable
how little attention has been paid to encircling barrier-reefs;
yet they are truly wonderful structures.  The following sketch
represents part of the barrier encircling the island of Bolabola
in the Pacific, as seen from one of the central peaks.
In this instance the whole line of reef has been converted
into land; but usually a snow-white line of great breakers,
with only here and there a single low islet crowned with
cocoa-nut trees, divides the dark heaving waters of the ocean
from the light-green expanse of the lagoon-channel.  And
the quiet waters of this channel generally bathe a fringe of
low alluvial soil, loaded with the most beautiful productions
of the tropics, and lying at the foot of the wild, abrupt,
central mountains.

Encircling barrier-reefs are of all sizes, from three miles
to no less than forty-four miles in diameter; and that which
fronts one side, and encircles both ends, of New Caledonia,
is 400 miles long.  Each reef includes one, two, or several
rocky islands of various heights; and in one instance, even
as many as twelve separate islands.  The reef runs at a
greater or less distance from the included land; in the
Society archipelago generally from one to three or four
miles; but at Hogoleu the reef is 20 miles on the southern
side, and 14 miles on the opposite or northern side, from the
included islands.  The depth within the lagoon-channel also
varies much; from 10 to 30 fathoms may be taken as an
average; but at Vanikoro there are spaces no less than 56
fathoms or 363 feet deep.  Internally the reef either slopes
gently into the lagoon-channel, or ends in a perpendicular
wall sometimes between two and three hundred feet under
water in height: externally the reef rises, like an atoll, with
extreme abruptness out of the profound depths of the ocean.

What can be more singular than these structures?  We see

[picture]

an island, which may be compared to a castle situated on the
summit of a lofty submarine mountain, protected by a great
wall of coral-rock, always steep externally and sometimes
internally, with a broad level summit, here and there breached
by a narrow gateway, through which the largest ships can
enter the wide and deep encircling moat.

As far as the actual reef of coral is concerned, there is not
the smallest difference, in general size, outline, grouping,
and even in quite trifling details of structure, between a
barrier and an atoll.  The geographer Balbi has well remarked,
that an encircled island is an atoll with high land rising out
of its lagoon; remove the land from within, and a perfect
atoll is left.

But what has caused these reefs to spring up at such
great distances from the shores of the included islands?  It
cannot be that the corals will not grow close to the land;
for the shores within the lagoon-channel, when not surrounded
by alluvial soil, are often fringed by living reefs;
and we shall presently see that there is a whole class, which
I have called Fringing Reefs from their close attachment
to the shores both of continents and of islands.  Again, on
what have the reef-building corals, which cannot live at
great depths, based their encircling structures?  This is a
great apparent difficulty, analogous to that in the case of
atolls, which has generally been overlooked.  It will be
perceived more clearly by inspecting the following sections
which are real ones, taken in north and south lines, through
the islands with their barrier-reefs, of Vanikoro, Gambier,
and Maurua; and they are laid down, both vertically and
horizontally, on the same scale of a quarter of an inch to
a mile.

It should be observed that the sections might have been
taken in any direction through these islands, or through

[picture]

many other encircled islands, and the general features would
have been the same.  Now, bearing in mind that reef-building
coral cannot live at a greater depth than from 20 to 30
fathoms, and that the scale is so small that the plummets on
the right hand show a depth of  200 fathoms, on what are
these barrier-reefs based?  Are we to suppose that each
island is surrounded by a collar-like submarine ledge of rock,
or by a great bank of sediment, ending abruptly where the
reef ends?

If the sea had formerly eaten deeply into the islands,
before they were protected by the reefs, thus having
left a shallow ledge round them under water, the present
shores would have been invariably bounded by great precipices,
but this is most rarely the case.  Moreover, on this
notion, it is not possible to explain why the corals should
have sprung up, like a wall, from the extreme outer margin
of the ledge, often leaving a broad space of water within,
too deep for the growth of corals.  The accumulation of a
wide bank of sediment all round these islands, and generally
widest where the included islands are smallest, is highly
improbable, considering their exposed positions in the central
and deepest parts of the ocean.  In the case of the barrier-reef
of New Caledonia, which extends for 150 miles beyond
the northern point of the islands, in the same straight line
with which it fronts the west coast, it is hardly possible to
believe that a bank of sediment could thus have been
straightly deposited in front of a lofty island, and so far
beyond its termination in the open sea.  Finally, if we look
to other oceanic islands of about the same height and of similar
geological constitution, but not encircled by coral-reefs,
we may in vain search for so trifling a circumambient
depth as 30 fathoms, except quite near to their shores; for
usually land that rises abruptly out of water, as do most of
the encircled and non-encircled oceanic islands, plunges
abruptly under it.  On what then, I repeat, are these barrier
reefs based?  Why, with their wide and deep moat-like channels,
do they stand so far from the included land?  We shall
soon see how easily these difficulties disappear.

We come now to our third class of Fringing-reefs, which
will require a very short notice.  Where the land slopes abruptly
under water, these reefs are only a few yards in width,
forming a mere ribbon or fringe round the shores: where
the land slopes gently under the water the reef extends
further, sometimes even as much as a mile from the land;
but in such cases the soundings outside the reef always show
that the submarine prolongation of the land is gently inclined.
In fact, the reefs extend only to that distance from the shore,
at which a foundation within the requisite depth from 20 to
30 fathoms is found.  As far as the actual reef is concerned,
there is no essential difference between it and that forming
a barrier or an atoll: it is, however, generally of less width,
and consequently few islets have been formed on it.  From
the corals growing more vigorously on the outside, and from
the noxious effect of the sediment washed inwards, the outer
edge of the reef is the highest part, and between it and the
land there is generally a shallow sandy channel a few feet in
depth.  Where banks or sediments have accumulated near to
the surface, as in parts of the West Indies, they sometimes
become fringed with corals, and hence in some degree resemble
lagoon-islands or atolls, in the same manner as fringing-reefs,
surrounding gently sloping islands, in some degree resemble
barrier-reefs.


No theory on the formation of coral-reefs can be considered
satisfactory which does not include the three great

[picture]

classes.  We have seen that we are driven to believe in the
subsidence of those vast areas, interspersed with low islands,
of which not one rises above the height to which the wind and
waves can throw up matter, and yet are constructed by animals
requiring a foundation, and that foundation to lie at
no great depth.  Let us then take an island surrounded by
fringing-reefs, which offer no difficulty in their structure;
and let this island with its reefs, represented by the unbroken
lines in the woodcut, slowly subside.  Now, as the island
sinks down, either a few feet at a time or quite insensibly,
we may safely infer, from what is known of the conditions
favourable to the growth of coral, that the living masses,
bathed by the surf on the margin of the reef, will soon regain
the surface.  The water, however, will encroach little by little
on the shore, the island becoming lower and smaller, and the
space between the inner edge of the reef and the beach
proportionately broader.  A section of the reef and island in
this state, after a subsidence of several hundred feet, is given
by the dotted lines.  Coral islets are supposed to have been
formed on the reef; and a ship is anchored in the
lagoon-channel.  This channel will be more or less deep,
according to the rate of subsidence, to the amount of sediment
accumulated in it, and to the growth of the delicately branched
corals which can live there.  The section in this state resembles
in every respect one drawn through an encircled island: in fact,
it is a real section (on the scale of .517 of an inch to a mile)
through Bolabola in the Pacific.  We can now at once see
why encircling barrier-reefs stand so far from the shores
which they front.  We can also perceive, that a line drawn
perpendicularly down from the outer edge of the new reef,
to the foundation of solid rock beneath the old fringing-reef,
will exceed by as many feet as there have been feet of
subsidence, that small limit of depth at which the effective
corals can live: -- the little architects having built up their
great wall-like mass, as the whole sank down, upon a basis
formed of other corals and their consolidated fragments.
Thus the difficulty on this head, which appeared so great,
disappears.

If, instead of an island, we had taken the shore of a continent
fringed with reefs, and had imagined it to have subsided,
a great straight barrier, like that of Australia or New
Caledonia, separated from the land by a wide and deep channel,
would evidently have been the result.

Let us take our new encircling barrier-reef, of which the
section is now represented by unbroken lines, and which, as
I have said, is a real section through Bolabola, and let it go
on subsiding.  As the barrier-reef slowly sinks down, the
corals will go on vigorously growing upwards; but as the
island sinks, the water will gain inch by inch on the shore --
the separate mountains first forming separate islands within

[picture]

one great reef -- and finally, the last and highest pinnacle
disappearing.  The instant this takes place, a perfect atoll
is formed: I have said, remove the high land from within an
encircling barrier-reef, and an atoll is left, and the land has
been removed.  We can now perceive how it comes that
atolls, having sprung from encircling barrier-reefs, resemble
them in general size, form, in the manner in which they are
grouped together, and in their arrangement in single or
double lines; for they may be called rude outline charts of
the sunken islands over which they stand.  We can further
see how it arises that the atolls in the Pacific and Indian
Oceans extend in lines parallel to the generally prevailing
strike of the high islands and great coast-lines of those
oceans.  I venture, therefore, to affirm, that on the theory of
the upward growth of the corals during the sinking of the
land, [13] all the leading features in those wonderful
structures, the lagoon-islands or atolls, which have so long
excited the attention of voyagers, as well as in the no less
wonderful barrier-reefs, whether encircling small islands or
stretching for hundreds of miles along the shores of a
continent, are simply explained.

It may be asked, whether I can offer any direct evidence
of the subsidence of barrier-reefs or atolls; but it must be
borne in mind how difficult it must ever be to detect a
movement, the tendency of which is to hide under water the part
affected.  Nevertheless, at Keeling atoll I observed on all
sides of the lagoon old cocoa-nut trees undermined and falling;
and in one place the foundation-posts of a shed, which
the inhabitants asserted had stood seven years before just
above high-water mark, but now was daily washed by every
tide: on inquiry I found that three earthquakes, one of them
severe, had been felt here during the last ten years.  At
Vanikoro, the lagoon-channel is remarkably deep, scarcely
any alluvial soil has accumulated at the foot of the lofty
included mountains, and remarkably few islets have been
formed by the heaping of fragments and sand on the wall-like
barrier reef; these facts, and some analogous ones, led
me to believe that this island must lately have subsided and
the reef grown upwards: here again earthquakes are frequent
and very severe.  In the Society archipelago, on the
other hand, where the lagoon-channels are almost choked up,
where much low alluvial land has accumulated, and where in
some cases long islets have been formed on the barrier-reefs
 -- facts all showing that the islands have not very lately
subsided -- only feeble shocks are most rarely felt.  In these
coral formations, where the land and water seem struggling
for mastery, it must be ever difficult to decide between the
effects of a change in the set of the tides and of a slight
subsidence: that many of these reefs and atolls are subject to
changes of some kind is certain; on some atolls the islets
appear to have increased greatly within a late period; on
others they have been partially or wholly washed away.  The
inhabitants of parts of the Maldiva archipelago know the
date of the first formation of some islets; in other parts, the
corals are now flourishing on water-washed reefs, where
holes made for graves attest the former existence of inhabited
land.  It is difficult to believe in frequent changes in the
tidal currents of an open ocean; whereas, we have in the
earthquakes recorded by the natives on some atolls, and in
the great fissures observed on other atolls, plain evidence of
changes and disturbances in progress in the subterranean
regions.

It is evident, on our theory, that coasts merely fringed by
reefs cannot have subsided to any perceptible amount; and
therefore they must, since the growth of their corals, either
have remained stationary or have been upheaved.  Now, it
is remarkable how generally it can be shown, by the presence
of upraised organic remains, that the fringed islands have
been elevated: and so far, this is indirect evidence in favour
of our theory.  I was particularly struck with this fact, when
I found, to my surprise, that the descriptions given by MM.
Quoy and Gaimard were applicable, not to reefs in general
as implied by them, but only to those of the fringing class;
my surprise, however, ceased when I afterwards found that,
by a strange chance, all the several islands visited by these
eminent naturalists, could be shown by their own statements
to have been elevated within a recent geological era.

Not only the grand features in the structure of barrier-reefs
and of atolls, and to their likeness to each other in form,
size, and other characters, are explained on the theory of
subsidence -- which theory we are independently forced to
admit in the very areas in question, from the necessity of
finding bases for the corals within the requisite depth -- but
many details in structure and exceptional cases can thus also
be simply explained.  I will give only a few instances.  In
barrier-reefs it has long been remarked with surprise, that
the passages through the reef exactly face valleys in the
included land, even in cases where the reef is separated
from the land by a lagoon-channel so wide and so much
deeper than the actual passage itself, that it seems hardly
possible that the very small quantity of water or sediment
brought down could injure the corals on the reef.  Now,
every reef of the fringing class is breached by a narrow
gateway in front of the smallest rivulet, even if dry during
the greater part of the year, for the mud, sand, or gravel,
occasionally washed down kills the corals on which it is
deposited.  Consequently, when an island thus fringed subsides,
though most of the narrow gateways will probably
become closed by the outward and upward growth of the
corals, yet any that are not closed (and some must always be
kept open by the sediment and impure water flowing out of
the lagoon-channel) will still continue to front exactly the
upper parts of those valleys, at the mouths of which the
original basal fringing-reef was breached.

We can easily see how an island fronted only on one side, or on
one side with one end or both ends encircled by barrier-reefs,
might after long-continued subsidence be converted
either into a single wall-like reef, or into an atoll with a
great straight spur projecting from it, or into two or three
atolls tied together by straight reefs -- all of which
exceptional cases actually occur.  As the reef-building corals
require food, are preyed upon by other animals, are killed by
sediment, cannot adhere to a loose bottom, and may be easily
carried down to a depth whence they cannot spring up again,
we need feel no surprise at the reefs both of atolls and
barriers becoming in parts imperfect.  The great barrier of
New Caledonia is thus imperfect and broken in many parts;
hence, after long subsidence, this great reef would not produce
one great atoll 400 miles in length, but a chain or
archipelago of atolls, of very nearly the same dimension with
those in the Maldiva archipelago.  Moreover, in an atoll once
breached on opposite sides, from the likelihood of the oceanic
and tidal currents passing straight through the breaches, it
is extremely improbable that the corals, especially during
continued subsidence, would ever be able again to unite the
rim; if they did not, as the whole sank downwards, one atoll
would be divided into two or more.  In the Maldiva archipelago
there are distinct atolls so related to each other in
position, and separated by channels either unfathomable or
very deep (the channel between Ross and Ari atolls is 150
fathoms, and that between the north and south Nillandoo
atolls is 200 fathoms in depth), that it is impossible to look
at a map of them without believing that they were once
more intimately related.  And in this same archipelago,
Mahlos-Mahdoo atoll is divided by a bifurcating channel
from 100 to 132 fathoms in depth, in such a manner, that
it is scarcely possible to say whether it ought strictly to
be called three separate atolls, or one great atoll not yet
finally divided.

I will not enter on many more details; but I must remark
that the curious structure of the northern Maldiva atolls
receives (taking into consideration the free entrance of the
sea through their broken margins) a simple explanation in
the upward and outward growth of the corals, originally
based both on small detached reefs in their lagoons, such as
occur in common atolls, and on broken portions of the linear
marginal reef, such as bounds every atoll of the ordinary
form.  I cannot refrain from once again remarking on the
singularity of these complex structures -- a great sandy and
generally concave disk rises abruptly from the unfathomable
ocean, with its central expanse studded, and its edge
symmetrically bordered with oval basins of coral-rock just
lipping the surface of the sea, sometimes clothed with
vegetation, and each containing a lake of clear water!

One more point in detail: as in the two neighbouring
archipelagoes corals flourish in one and not in the other, and
as so many conditions before enumerated must affect their
existence, it would be an inexplicable fact if, during the
changes to which earth, air, and water are subjected, the
reef-building corals were to keep alive for perpetuity on any
one spot or area.  And as by our theory the areas including
atolls and barrier-reefs are subsiding, we ought occasionally to
find reefs both dead and submerged.  In all reefs, owing to the
sediment being washed out of the lagoon-channel to leeward,
that side is least favourable to the long-continued vigorous
growth of the corals; hence dead portions of reef not
unfrequently occur on the leeward side; and these, though still
retaining their proper wall-like form, are now in several
instances sunk several fathoms beneath the surface.  The
Chagos group appears from some cause, possibly from the
subsidence having been too rapid, at present to be much less
favourably circumstanced for the growth of reefs than formerly:
one atoll has a portion of its marginal reef, nine miles
in length, dead and submerged; a second has only a few
quite small living points which rise to the surface, a third
and fourth are entirely dead and submerged; a fifth is a
mere wreck, with its structure almost obliterated.  It is
remarkable that in all these cases, the dead reefs and portions
of reef lie at nearly the same depth, namely, from six to
eight fathoms beneath the surface, as if they had been carried
down by one uniform movement.  One of these "half-drowned
atolls," so called by Capt. Moresby (to whom I
am indebted for much invaluable information), is of vast
size, namely, ninety nautical miles across in one direction,
and seventy miles in another line; and is in many respects
eminently curious.  As by our theory it follows that new
atolls will generally be formed in each new area of subsidence,
two weighty objections might have been raised,
namely, that atolls must be increasing indefinitely in number;
and secondly, that in old areas of subsidence each separate
atoll must be increasing indefinitely in thickness, if proofs
of their occasional destruction could not have been adduced.
Thus have we traced the history of these great rings of
coral-rock, from their first origin through their normal
changes, and through the occasional accidents of their
existence, to their death and final obliteration.


In my volume on "Coral Formations" I have published a
map, in which I have coloured all the atolls dark-blue, the
barrier-reefs pale-blue, and the fringing reefs red.  These
latter reefs have been formed whilst the land has been
stationary, or, as appears from the frequent presence of
upraised organic remains, whilst it has been slowly rising:
atolls and barrier-reefs, on the other hand, have grown up
during the directly opposite movement of subsidence, which
movement must have been very gradual, and in the case of atolls
so vast in amount as to have buried every mountain-summit over
wide ocean-spaces.  Now in this map we see that the reefs
tinted pale and dark-blue, which have been produced by the
same order of movement, as a general rule manifestly stand
near each other.  Again we see, that the areas with the two
blue tints are of wide extent; and that they lie separate from
extensive lines of coast coloured red, both of which
circumstances might naturally have been inferred, on the theory
of the nature of the reefs having been governed by the nature
of the earth's movement.  It deserves notice that in more
than one instance where single red and blue circles approach
near each other, I can show that there have been oscillations
of level; for in such cases the red or fringed circles consist
of atolls, originally by our theory formed during subsidence,
but subsequently upheaved; and on the other hand, some of
the pale-blue or encircled islands are composed of coral-rock,
which must have been uplifted to its present height before that
subsidence took place, during which the existing barrier-reefs
grew upwards.

Authors have noticed with surprise, that although atolls
are the commonest coral-structures throughout some enormous
oceanic tracts, they are entirely absent in other seas,
as in the West Indies: we can now at once perceive the
cause, for where there has not been subsidence, atolls cannot
have been formed; and in the case of the West Indies and
parts of the East Indies, these tracts are known to have been
rising within the recent period.  The larger areas, coloured
red and blue, are all elongated; and between the two colours
there is a degree of rude alternation, as if the rising of one
had balanced the sinking of the other.  Taking into consideration
the proofs of recent elevation both on the fringed
coasts and on some others (for instance, in South America)
where there are no reefs, we are led to conclude that the
great continents are for the most part rising areas: and from
the nature of the coral-reefs, that the central parts of the
great oceans are sinking areas.  The East Indian archipelago,
the most broken land in the world, is in most parts an area
of elevation, but surrounded and penetrated, probably in
more lines than one, by narrow areas of subsidence.

I have marked with vermilion spots all the many known
active volcanos within the limits of this same map.  Their
entire absence from every one of the great subsiding areas,
coloured either pale or dark blue, is most striking and not
less so is the coincidence of the chief volcanic chains with
the parts coloured red, which we are led to conclude have
either long remained stationary, or more generally have been
recently upraised.  Although a few of the vermilion spots
occur within no great distance of single circles tinted blue,
yet not one single active volcano is situated within several
hundred miles of an archipelago, or even small group of
atolls.  It is, therefore, a striking fact that in the Friendly
archipelago, which consists of a group of atolls upheaved
and since partially worn down, two volcanos, and perhaps
more, are historically known to have been in action.  On the
other hand, although most of the islands in the Pacific which
are encircled by barrier-reefs, are of volcanic origin, often
with the remnants of craters still distinguishable, not one of
them is known to have ever been in eruption.  Hence in these
cases it would appear, that volcanos burst forth into action
and become extinguished on the same spots, accordingly as
elevatory or subsiding movements prevail there.  Numberless
facts could be adduced to prove that upraised organic remains
are common wherever there are active volcanos; but until it
could be shown that in areas of subsidence, volcanos were
either absent or inactive, the inference, however probable in
itself, that their distribution depended on the rising or
falling of the earth's surface, would have been hazardous.  But
now, I think, we may freely admit this important deduction.

Taking a final view of the map, and bearing in mind the
statements made with respect to the upraised organic remains,
we must feel astonished at the vastness of the areas, which
have suffered changes in level either downwards or upwards,
within a period not geologically remote.  It would appear
also, that the elevatory and subsiding movements follow
nearly the same laws.  Throughout the spaces interspersed
with atolls, where not a single peak of high land has been
left above the level of the sea, the sinking must have been
immense in amount.  The sinking, moreover, whether continuous,
or recurrent with intervals sufficiently long for the
corals again to bring up their living edifices to the surface,
must necessarily have been extremely slow.  This conclusion is
probably the most important one which can be deduced from the
study of coral formations; -- and it is one which it is
difficult to imagine how otherwise could ever have been
arrived at.  Nor can I quite pass over the probability of the
former existence of large archipelagoes of lofty islands,
where now only rings of coral-rock scarcely break the open
expanse of the sea, throwing some light on the distribution of
the inhabitants of the other high islands, now left standing
so immensely remote from each other in the midst of the
great oceans.  The reef-constructing corals have indeed
reared and preserved wonderful memorials of the subterranean
oscillations of level; we see in each barrier-reef a
proof that the land has there subsided, and in each atoll a
monument over an island now lost.  We may thus, like unto
a geologist who had lived his ten thousand years and kept a
record of the passing changes, gain some insight into the
great system by which the surface of this globe has been
broken up, and land and water interchanged.

[1] These Plants are described in the Annals of Nat. Hist.,
vol. i., 1838, p. 337.

[2] Holman's Travels, vol. iv. p. 378.

[3] Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii. p. 155.

[4] The thirteen species belong to the following orders: -- In
the Coleoptera, a minute Elater; Orthoptera, a Gryllus and a
Blatta; Hemiptera, one species; Homoptera, two; Neuroptera a
Chrysopa; Hymenoptera, two ants; Lepidoptera nocturna, a
Diopaea, and a Pterophorus (?); Diptera, two species.

[5] Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii. p. 222.

[6] The large claws or pincers of some of these crabs are most
beautifully adapted, when drawn back, to form an operculum to
the shell, nearly as perfect as the proper one originally
belonging to the molluscous animal.  I was assured, and as far as
my observations went I found it so, that certain species of the
hermit-crab always use certain species of shells.

[7] Some natives carried by Kotzebue to Kamtschatka collected
stones to take back to their country.

[8] See Proceedings of Zoological Society, 1832, p. 17.

[9] Tyerman and Bennett. Voyage, etc. vol. ii. p. 33.

[10] I exclude, of course, some soil which has been imported
here in vessels from Malacca and Java, and likewise, some small
fragments of pumice, drifted here by the waves.  The one block of
greenstone, moreover, on the northern island must be excepted.

[11] These were first read before the Geological Society in May,
1837, and have since been developed in a separate volume on the
"Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs."

[12] It is remarkable that Mr. Lyell, even in the first edition
of his "Principles of Geology," inferred that the amount of
subsidence in the Pacific must have exceeded that of elevation,
from the area of land being very small relatively to the agents
there tending to form it, namely, the growth of coral and
volcanic action.

[13] It has been highly satisfactory to me to find the following
passage in a pamphlet by Mr. Couthouy, one of the naturalists in
the great Antarctic Expedition of the United States: -- "Having
personally examined a large number of coral-islands and resided
eight months among the volcanic class having shore and partially
encircling reefs.  I may be permitted to state that my own
observations have impressed a conviction of the correctness of
the theory of Mr. Darwin." -- The naturalists, however, of this
expedition differ with me on some points respecting coral
formations.



CHAPTER XXI

MAURITIUS TO ENGLAND

Mauritius, beautiful appearance of -- Great crateriform ring of
Mountains -- Hindoos -- St. Helena -- History of the changes in
the Vegetation -- Cause of the extinction of Land-shells --
Ascension -- Variation in the imported Rats -- Volcanic Bombs --
Beds of Infusoria -- Bahia -- Brazil -- Splendour of Tropical
Scenery -- Pernambuco -- Singular Reef -- Slavery -- Return to
England -- Retrospect on our Voyage.


APRIL 29th. -- In the morning we passed round the
northern end of Mauritius, or the Isle of France.
From this point of view the aspect of the island
equalled the expectations raised by the many well-known
descriptions of its beautiful scenery.  The sloping plain of
the Pamplemousses, interspersed with houses, and coloured
by the large fields of sugar-cane of a bright green, composed
the foreground.  The brilliancy of the green was the more
remarkable because it is a colour which generally is conspicuous
only from a very short distance.  Towards the centre
of the island groups of wooded mountains rose out of
this highly cultivated plain; their summits, as so commonly
happens with ancient volcanic rocks, being jagged into the
sharpest points.  Masses of white clouds were collected
around these pinnacles, as if for the sake of pleasing the
stranger's eye.  The whole island, with its sloping border
and central mountains, was adorned with an air of perfect
elegance: the scenery, if I may use such an expression, appeared
to the sight harmonious.

I spent the greater part of the next day in walking about
the town and visiting different people.  The town is of
considerable size, and is said to contain 20,000 inhabitants;
the streets are very clean and regular.  Although the island has
been so many years under the English Government, the general
character of the place is quite French: Englishmen
speak to their servants in French, and the shops are all
French; indeed, I should think that Calais or Boulogne was
much more Anglified.  There is a very pretty little theatre,
in which operas are excellently performed.  We were also
surprised at seeing large booksellers' shops, with well-stored
shelves; -- music and reading bespeak our approach to the
old world of civilization; for in truth both Australia and
America are new worlds.

The various races of men walking in the streets afford the
most interesting spectacle in Port Louis.  Convicts from
India are banished here for life; at present there are about
800, and they are employed in various public works.  Before
seeing these people, I had no idea that the inhabitants of
India were such noble-looking figures.  Their skin is extremely
dark, and many of the older men had large mustaches
and beards of a snow-white colour; this, together with
the fire of their expression, gave them quite an imposing
aspect.  The greater number had been banished for murder
and the worst crimes; others for causes which can scarcely
be considered as moral faults, such as for not obeying, from
superstitious motives, the English laws.  These men are
generally quiet and well-conducted; from their outward
conduct, their cleanliness, and faithful observance of their
strange religious rites, it was impossible to look at them
with the same eyes as on our wretched convicts in New
South Wales.

May 1st. -- Sunday.  I took a quiet walk along the seacoast
to the north of the town.  The plain in this part is quite
uncultivated; it consists of a field of black lava, smoothed
over with coarse grass and bushes, the latter being chiefly
Mimosas.  The scenery may be described as intermediate in
character between that of the Galapagos and of Tahiti; but
this will convey a definite idea to very few persons.  It is a
very pleasant country, but it has not the charms of Tahiti, or
the grandeur of Brazil.  The next day I ascended La Pouce,
a mountain so called from a thumb-like projection, which
rises close behind the town to a height of 2,600 feet.  The
centre of the island consists of a great platform, surrounded
by old broken basaltic mountains, with their strata dipping
seawards.  The central platform, formed of comparatively
recent streams of lava, is of an oval shape, thirteen
geographical miles across, in the line of its shorter axis.  The
exterior bounding mountains come into that class of structures
called Craters of Elevation, which are supposed to have
been formed not like ordinary craters, but by a great and
sudden upheaval.  There appears to me to be insuperable
objections to this view: on the other hand, I can hardly
believe, in this and in some other cases, that these marginal
crateriform mountains are merely the basal remnants of
immense volcanos, of which the summits either have been
blown off, or swallowed up in subterranean abysses.

From our elevated position we enjoyed an excellent view over the
island.  The country on this side appears pretty well cultivated,
being divided into fields and studded with farm-houses.
I was, however, assured that of the whole land, not
more than half is yet in a productive state; if such be the
case, considering the present large export of sugar, this
island, at some future period when thickly peopled, will be
of great value.  Since England has taken possession of it, a
period of only twenty-five years, the export of sugar is said
to have increased seventy-five fold.  One great cause of its
prosperity is the excellent state of the roads.  In the
neighbouring Isle of Bourbon, which remains under the French
government, the roads are still in the same miserable state
as they were here only a few years ago.  Although the
French residents must have largely profited by the increased
prosperity of their island, yet the English government is far
from popular.

3rd. -- In the evening Captain Lloyd, the Surveyor-general,
so well known from his examination of the Isthmus of Panama,
invited Mr. Stokes and myself to his country-house,
which is situated on the edge of Wilheim Plains, and about
six miles from the Port.  We stayed at this delightful place
two days; standing nearly 800 feet above the sea, the air was
cool and fresh, and on every side there were delightful walks.
Close by, a grand ravine has been worn to a depth of about
500 feet through the slightly inclined streams of lava, which
have flowed from the central platform.

5th. -- Captain Lloyd took us to the Riviere Noire, which is
several miles to the southward, that I might examine some
rocks of elevated coral.  We passed through pleasant gardens,
and fine fields of sugar-cane growing amidst huge
blocks of lava.  The roads were bordered by hedges of
Mimosa, and near many of the houses there were avenues
of the mango.  Some of the views, where the peaked hills
and the cultivated farms were seen together, were exceedingly
picturesque; and we were constantly tempted to
exclaim, "How pleasant it would be to pass one's life in
such quiet abodes!" Captain Lloyd possessed an elephant,
and he sent it half way with us, that we might enjoy a ride
in true Indian fashion.  The circumstance which surprised
me most was its quite noiseless step.  This elephant
is the only one at present on the island; but it is said others
will be sent for.


May 9th. -- We sailed from Port Louis, and, calling at the
Cape of Good Hope, on the 8th of July, we arrived off St.
Helena.  This island, the forbidding aspect of which has
been so often described, rises abruptly like a huge black
castle from the ocean.  Near the town, as if to complete
nature's defence, small forts and guns fill up every gap in
the rugged rocks.  The town runs up a flat and narrow
valley; the houses look respectable, and are interspersed
with a very few green trees.  When approaching the anchorage
there was one striking view: an irregular castle perched
on the summit of a lofty hill, and surrounded by a few scattered
fir-trees, boldly projected against the sky.

The next day I obtained lodgings within a stone's throw
of Napoleon's tomb; [1] it was a capital central situation,
whence I could make excursions in every direction.  During
the four days I stayed here, I wandered over the island from
morning to night, and examined its geological history.  My
lodgings were situated at a height of about 2000 feet; here
the weather was cold and boisterous, with constant showers
of rain; and every now and then the whole scene was veiled
in thick clouds.

Near the coast the rough lava is quite bare: in the central
and higher parts, feldspathic rocks by their decomposition
have produced a clayey soil, which, where not covered by
vegetation, is stained in broad bands of many bright colours.
At this season, the land moistened by constant showers,
produces a singularly bright green pasture, which lower and
lower down, gradually fades away and at last disappears.  In
latitude 16 degs., and at the trifling elevation of 1500 feet,
it is surprising to behold a vegetation possessing a character
decidedly British.  The hills are crowned with irregular
plantations of Scotch firs; and the sloping banks are thickly
scattered over with thickets of gorse, covered with its bright
yellow flowers.  Weeping-willows are common on the banks
of the rivulets, and the hedges are made of the blackberry,
producing its well-known fruit.  When we consider that the
number of plants now found on the island is 746, and that
out of these fifty-two alone are indigenous species, the rest
having been imported, and most of them from England,
we see the reason of the British character of the vegetation.
Many of these English plants appear to flourish better than
in their native country; some also from the opposite quarter
of Australia succeed remarkably well.  The many imported
species must have destroyed some of the native kinds; and
it is only on the highest and steepest ridges that the
indigenous Flora is now predominant.

The English, or rather Welsh character of the scenery, is
kept up by the numerous cottages and small white houses;
some buried at the bottom of the deepest valleys, and others
mounted on the crests of the lofty hills.  Some of the views
are striking, for instance that from near Sir W. Doveton's
house, where the bold peak called Lot is seen over a dark
wood of firs, the whole being backed by the red water-worn
mountains of the southern coast.  On viewing the island
from an eminence, the first circumstance which strikes one,
is the number of the roads and forts: the labour bestowed
on the public works, if one forgets its character as a prison,
seems out of all proportion to its extent or value.  There
is so little level or useful land, that it seems surprising how
so many people, about 5000, can subsist here.  The lower
orders, or the emancipated slaves, are I believe extremely
poor: they complain of the want of work.  From the reduction
in the number of public servants owing to the island
having been given up by the East Indian Company, and the
consequent emigration of many of the richer people, the
poverty probably will increase.  The chief food of the working
class is rice with a little salt meat; as neither of these
articles are the products of the island, but must be purchased
with money, the low wages tell heavily on the poor people.
Now that the people are blessed with freedom, a right which
I believe they value fully, it seems probable that their numbers
will quickly increase: if so, what is to become of the
little state of St. Helena?

My guide was an elderly man, who had been a goatherd
when a boy, and knew every step amongst the rocks.  He
was of a race many times crossed, and although with a
dusky skin, he had not the disagreeable expression of a
mulatto.  He was a very civil, quiet old man, and such
appears the character of the greater number of the lower
classes.  It was strange to my ears to hear a man, nearly
white and respectably dressed, talking with indifference of
the times when he was a slave.  With my companion, who
carried our dinners and a horn of water, which is quite
necessary, as all the water in the lower valleys is saline, I
every day took long walks.

Beneath the upper and central green circle, the wild valleys
are quite desolate and untenanted.  Here, to the geologist,
there were scenes of high interest, showing successive
changes and complicated disturbances.  According to my
views, St. Helena has existed as an island from a very
remote epoch: some obscure proofs, however, of the elevation
of the land are still extant.  I believe that the central
and highest peaks form parts of the rim of a great crater,
the southern half of which has been entirely removed by the
waves of the sea: there is, moreover, an external wall of
black basaltic rocks, like the coast-mountains of Mauritius,
which are older than the central volcanic streams.  On the
higher parts of the island, considerable numbers of a shell,
long thought to be a marine species occur imbedded in the soil.

It proved to be a Cochlogena, or land-shell of a very
peculiar form; [2] with it I found six other kinds; and in
another spot an eighth species.  It is remarkable that none
of them are now found living.  Their extinction has probably
been caused by the entire destruction of the woods, and
the consequent loss of food and shelter, which occurred
during the early part of the last century.

The history of the changes, which the elevated plains of
Longwood and Deadwood have undergone, as given in General
Beatson's account of the island, is extremely curious.
Both plains, it is said in former times were covered with
wood, and were therefore called the Great Wood.  So late
as the year 1716 there were many trees, but in 1724 the old
trees had mostly fallen; and as goats and hogs had been
suffered to range about, all the young trees had been killed.
It appears also from the official records, that the trees were
unexpectedly, some years afterwards, succeeded by a wire
grass which spread over the whole surface. [3] General Beatson
adds that now this plain "is covered with fine sward, and
is become the finest piece of pasture on the island." The
extent of surface, probably covered by wood at a former
period, is estimated at no less than two thousand acres; at
the present day scarcely a single tree can be found there.  It
is also said that in 1709 there were quantities of dead trees
in Sandy Bay; this place is now so utterly desert, that nothing
but so well attested an account could have made me believe
that they could ever have grown there.  The fact, that the
goats and hogs destroyed all the young trees as they sprang
up, and that in the course of time the old ones, which were
safe from their attacks, perished from age, seems clearly
made out.  Goats were introduced in the year 1502; eighty-six
years afterwards, in the time of Cavendish, it is known
that they were exceedingly numerous.  More than a century
afterwards, in 1731, when the evil was complete and
irretrievable, an order was issued that all stray animals should
be destroyed.  It is very interesting thus to find, that the
arrival of animals at St. Helena in 1501, did not change the
whole aspect of the island, until a period of two hundred
and twenty years had elapsed: for the goats were introduced
in 1502, and in 1724 it is said "the old trees had mostly
fallen." There can be little doubt that this great change in
the vegetation affected not only the land-shells, causing eight
species to become extinct, but likewise a multitude of insects.

St. Helena, situated so remote from any continent, in the
midst of a great ocean, and possessing a unique Flora, excites
our curiosity.  The eight land-shells, though now extinct,
and one living Succinea, are peculiar species found nowhere
else.  Mr. Cuming, however, informs me that an English
Helix is common here, its eggs no doubt having been imported
in some of the many introduced plants.  Mr. Cuming
collected on the coast sixteen species of sea-shells, of which
seven, as far as he knows, are confined to this island.  Birds
and insects, [4] as might have been expected, are very few in
number; indeed I believe all the birds have been introduced
within late years.  Partridges and pheasants are tolerably
abundant; the island is much too English not to be subject
to strict game-laws.  I was told of a more unjust sacrifice to
such ordinances than I ever heard of even in England.  The
poor people formerly used to burn a plant, which grows on the
coast-rocks, and export the soda from its ashes; but a
peremptory order came out prohibiting this practice, and giving
as a reason that the partridges would have nowhere to build.

In my walks I passed more than once over the grassy plain
bounded by deep valleys, on which Longwood stands.
Viewed from a short distance, it appears like a respectable
gentleman's country-seat.  In front there are a few cultivated
fields, and beyond them the smooth hill of coloured
rocks called the Flagstaff, and the rugged square black mass
of the Barn.  On the whole the view was rather bleak and
uninteresting.  The only inconvenience I suffered during my
walks was from the impetuous winds.  One day I noticed
a curious circumstance; standing on the edge of a plain,
terminated by a great cliff of about a thousand feet in depth,
I saw at the distance of a few yards right to windward, some
tern, struggling against a very strong breeze, whilst, where
I stood, the air was quite calm.  Approaching close to the
brink, where the current seemed to be deflected upwards
from the face of the cliff, I stretched out my arm, and
immediately felt the full force of the wind: an invisible
barrier, two yards in width, separated perfectly calm air
from a strong blast.

I so much enjoyed my rambles among the rocks and mountains
of St. Helena, that I felt almost sorry on the morning
of the 14th to descend to the town.  Before noon I was on
board, and the Beagle made sail.

On the 19th of July we reached Ascension.  Those who
have beheld a volcanic island, situated under an arid climate,
will at once be able to picture to themselves the appearance
of Ascension.  They will imagine smooth conical hills of a
bright red colour, with their summits generally truncated,
rising separately out of a level surface of black rugged lava.
A principal mound in the centre of the island, seems the
father of the lesser cones.  It is called Green Hill: its
name being taken from the faintest tinge of that colour,
which at this time of the year is barely perceptible from the
anchorage.  To complete the desolate scene, the black rocks
on the coast are lashed by a wild and turbulent sea.

The settlement is near the beach; it consists of several
houses and barracks placed irregularly, but well built of
white freestone.  The only inhabitants are marines, and some
negroes liberated from slave-ships, who are paid and victualled
by government.  There is not a private person on the
island.  Many of the marines appeared well contented with their
situation; they think it better to serve their one-and-twenty
years on shore, let it be what it may, than in a ship; in this
choice, if I were a marine, I should most heartily agree.

The next morning I ascended Green Hill, 2840 feet high,
and thence walked across the island to the windward point.
A good cart-road leads from the coast-settlement to the
houses, gardens, and fields, placed near the summit of the
central mountain.  On the roadside there are milestones, and
likewise cisterns, where each thirsty passer-by can drink
some good water.  Similar care is displayed in each part of the
establishment, and especially in the management of the
springs, so that a single drop of water may not be lost: indeed
the whole island may be 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 passing
this end of the island at sea, I could not imagine what
the white patches were with which the whole plain was
mottled; I now found that they were seafowl, sleeping in such
full confidence, that even in midday a man could walk up
and seize hold of them.  These birds were the only living
creatures I saw during the whole day.  On the beach a great
surf, although the breeze was light, came tumbling over
the broken lava rocks.

The geology of this island is in many respects interesting.
In several places I noticed volcanic bombs, that is, masses of
lava which have been shot through the air whilst fluid, and
have consequently assumed a spherical or pear-shape.  Not
only their external form, but, in several cases, their internal
structure shows in a very curious manner that they have revolved
in their aerial course.  The internal structure of one
of these bombs, when broken, is represented very accurately
in the woodcut.  The central part is coarsely cellular, the
cells decreasing in size towards the exterior; where there
is a shell-like case about the third of an inch in thickness,
of compact stone, which again is overlaid by the outside
crust of finely cellular lava.  I think there can be little
doubt, first that the external crust cooled rapidly in the state
in which we now see it; secondly, that the still fluid lava
within, was packed by the centrifugal force, generated by


[picture]


the revolving of the bomb, against the external cooled
crust, and so produced the solid shell of stone; and lastly,
that the centrifugal force, by relieving the pressure in the
more central parts of the bomb, allowed the heated vapours
to expand their cells, thus forming the coarse cellular mass
of the centre.

A hill, formed of the older series of volcanic rocks, and
which has been incorrectly considered as the crater of a
volcano, is remarkable from its broad, slightly hollowed, and
circular summit having been filled up with many successive
layers of ashes and fine scoriae.  These saucer-shaped layers
crop out on the margin, forming perfect rings of many different
colours, giving to the summit a most fantastic appearance;
one of these rings is white and broad, and resembles
a course round which horses have been exercised; hence the
hill has been called the Devil's Riding School.  I brought away
specimens of one of the tufaceous layers of a pinkish colour and
it is a most extraordinary fact, that Professor Ehrenberg [5]
finds it almost wholly composed of matter which has been
organized: he detects in it some siliceous-shielded fresh-water
infusoria, and no less than twenty-five different kinds
of the siliceous tissue of plants, chiefly of grasses.  From
the absence of all carbonaceous matter, Professor Ehrenberg
believes that these organic bodies have passed through the
volcanic fire, and have been erupted in the state in which
we now see them.  The appearance of the layers induced me
to believe that they had been deposited under water, though
from the extreme dryness of the climate I was forced to imagine,
that torrents of rain had probably fallen during some
great eruption, and that thus a temporary lake had been
formed into which the ashes fell.  But it may now be suspected
that the lake was not a temporary one.  Anyhow, we
may feel sure, that at some former epoch the climate and
productions of Ascension were very different from what
they now are.  Where on the face of the earth can we find
a spot, on which close investigation will not discover signs
of that endless cycle of change, to which this earth has been,
is, and will be subjected?

On leaving Ascension, we sailed for Bahia, on the coast
of Brazil, in order to complete the chronometrical measurement
of the world.  We arrived there on August 1st, and
stayed four days, during which I took several long walks.
I was glad to find my enjoyment in tropical scenery had not
decreased from the want of novelty, even in the slightest
degree.  The elements of the scenery are so simple, that they
are worth mentioning, as a proof on what trifling circumstances
exquisite natural beauty depends.

The country may be described as a level plain of about
three hundred feet in elevation, which in all parts has been
worn into flat-bottomed valleys.  This structure is remarkable
in a granitic land, but is nearly universal in all those
softer formations of which plains are usually composed.
The whole surface is covered by various kinds of stately
trees, interspersed with patches of cultivated ground, out
of which houses, convents, and chapels arise.  It must be
remembered that within the tropics, the wild luxuriance of
nature is not lost even in the vicinity of large cities: for
the natural vegetation of the hedges and hill-sides overpowers
in picturesque effect the artificial labour of man.
Hence, there are only a few spots where the bright red
soil affords a strong contrast with the universal clothing
of green.  From the edges of the plain there are distant
views either of the ocean, or of the great Bay with its
low-wooded shores, and on which numerous boats and canoes
show their white sails.  Excepting from these points, the
scene is extremely limited; following the level pathways,
on each hand, only glimpses into the wooded valleys below
can be obtained.  The houses I may add, and especially the
sacred edifices, are built in a peculiar and rather fantastic
style of architecture.  They are all whitewashed; so that
when illumined by the brilliant sun of midday, and as seen
against the pale blue sky of the horizon, they stand out more
like shadows than real buildings.

Such are the elements of the scenery, but it is a hopeless
attempt to paint the general effect.  Learned naturalists
describe these scenes of the tropics by naming a multitude of
objects, and mentioning some characteristic feature of each.
To a learned traveller this possibly may communicate some
definite ideas: but who else from seeing a plant in an herbarium
can imagine its appearance when growing in its native
soil?  Who from seeing choice plants in a hothouse, can
magnify some into the dimensions of forest trees, and crowd
others into an entangled jungle?  Who when examining in
the cabinet of the entomologist the gay exotic butterflies,
and singular cicadas, will associate with these lifeless
objects, the ceaseless harsh music of the latter, and the
lazy flight of the former, -- the sure accompaniments of the
still, glowing noonday of the tropics?  It is when the sun has
attained its greatest height, that such scenes should be
viewed: then the dense splendid foliage of the mango hides
the ground with its darkest shade, whilst the upper branches
are rendered from the profusion of light of the most brilliant
green.  In the temperate zones the case is different -- the
vegetation there is not so dark or so rich, and hence the
rays of the declining sun, tinged of a red, purple, or bright
yellow color, add most to the beauties of those climes.

When quietly walking along the shady pathways, and admiring
each successive view, I wished to find language to
express my ideas.  Epithet after epithet was found too weak
to convey to those who have not visited the intertropical
regions, the sensation of delight which the mind experiences.
I have said that the plants in a hothouse fail to communicate
a just idea of the vegetation, yet I must recur to it.  The land
is one great wild, untidy, luxuriant hothouse, made by
Nature for herself, but taken possession of by man, who has
studded it with gay houses and formal gardens.  How great
would be the desire in every admirer of nature to behold,
if such were possible, the scenery of another planet! yet
to every person in Europe, it may be truly said, that at
the distance of only a few degrees from his native soil, the
glories of another world are opened to him.  In my last
walk I stopped again and again to gaze on these beauties, and
endeavoured to fix in my mind for ever, an impression which
at the time I knew sooner or later must fail.  The form of the
orange-tree, the cocoa-nut, the palm, the mango, the tree-fern,
the banana, will remain clear and separate; but the
thousand beauties which unite these into one perfect scene
must fade away: yet they will leave, like a tale heard in
childhood, a picture full of indistinct, but most beautiful
figures.

August 6th. -- In the afternoon we stood out to sea, with
the intention of making a direct course to the Cape de Verd
Islands.  Unfavourable winds, however, delayed us, and on
the 12th we ran into Pernambuco, -- a large city on the
coast of Brazil, in latitude 8 degs. south.  We anchored outside
the reef; but in a short time a pilot came on board and
took us into the inner harbour, where we lay close to the
town.

Pernambuco is built on some narrow and low sand-banks,
which are separated from each other by shoal channels of
salt water.  The three parts of the town are connected together
by two long bridges built on wooden piles.  The town is in
all parts disgusting, the streets being narrow, ill-paved,
and filthy; the houses, tall and gloomy.  The season
of heavy rains had hardly come to an end, and hence the
surrounding country, which is scarcely raised above the
level of the sea, was flooded with water; and I failed in
all my attempts to take walks.

The flat swampy land on which Pernambuco stands is surrounded,
at the distance of a few miles, by a semicircle of
low hills, or rather by the edge of a country elevated perhaps
two hundred feet above the sea.  The old city of
Olinda stands on one extremity of this range.  One day I
took a canoe, and proceeded up one of the channels to visit
it; I found the old town from its situation both sweeter and
cleaner than that of Pernambuco.  I must here commemorate
what happened for the first time during our nearly five
years' wandering, namely, having met with a want of politeness.
I was refused in a sullen manner at two different
houses, and obtained with difficulty from a third, permission
to pass through their gardens to an uncultivated hill,
for the purpose of viewing the country.  I feel glad that
this happened in the land of the Brazilians, for I bear
them no good will -- a land also of slavery, and therefore
of moral debasement.  A Spaniard would have felt ashamed
at the very thought of refusing such a request, or of
behaving to a stranger with rudeness.  The channel by which
we went to and returned from Olinda, was bordered on each
side by mangroves, which sprang like a miniature forest out
of the greasy mud-banks.  The bright green colour of these
bushes always reminded me of the rank grass in a church-yard:
both are nourished by putrid exhalations; the one speaks of
death past, and the other too often of death to come.

The most curious object which I saw in this neighbourhood,
was the reef that forms the harbour.  I doubt whether
in the whole world any other natural structure has so artificial
an appearance. [6] It runs for a length of several miles in
an absolutely straight line, parallel to, and not far distant
from, the shore.  It varies in width from thirty to sixty
yards, and its surface is level and smooth; it is composed of
obscurely stratified hard sandstone.  At high water the waves
break over it; at low water its summit is left dry, and it
might then be mistaken for a breakwater erected by Cyclopean
workmen.  On this coast the currents of the sea tend
to throw up in front of the land, long spits and bars of
loose sand, and on one of these, part of the town of Pernambuco
stands.  In former times a long spit of this nature
seems to have become consolidated by the percolation of
calcareous matter, and afterwards to have been gradually
upheaved; the outer and loose parts during this process having
been worn away by the action of the sea, and the solid
nucleus left as we now see it.  Although night and day the
waves of the open Atlantic, turbid with sediment, are
driven against the steep outside edges of this wall of stone,
yet the oldest pilots know of no tradition of any change in its
appearance.  This durability is much the most curious fact
in its history: it is due to a tough layer, a few inches thick,
of calcareous matter, wholly formed by the successive
growth and death of the small shells of Serpulae, together
with some few barnacles and nulliporae.  These nulliporae,
which are hard, very simply-organized sea-plants, play an
analogous and important part in protecting the upper surfaces
of coral-reefs, behind and within the breakers, where
the true corals, during the outward growth of the mass,
become killed by exposure to the sun and air.  These
insignificant organic beings, especially the Serpulae, have done
good service to the people of Pernambuco; for without their
protective aid the bar of sandstone would inevitably have
been long ago worn away and without the bar, there would
have been no harbour.

On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil.
I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country.  To
this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful
vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco,
I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but
suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew
that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate.  I
suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I
was told that this was the case in another instance.  Near
Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept
screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves.  I have
stayed in a house where a young household mulatto, daily
and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to
break the spirit of the lowest animal.  I have seen a little
boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip
(before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having
handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his
father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye.
These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish
colony, in which it has always been said, that slaves are
better treated than by the Portuguese, English, or other
European nations.  I have seen at Rio de Janeiro a powerful
negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his
face.  I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the
point of separating forever the men, women, and little
children of a large number of families who had long lived
together.  I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening
atrocities which I authentically heard of; -- nor would I have
mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with
several people, so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the
negro as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil.  Such people
have generally visited at the houses of the upper classes, where
the domestic slaves are usually well treated, and they have
not, like myself, lived amongst the lower classes.  Such
inquirers will ask slaves about their condition; they forget
that the slave must indeed be dull, who does not calculate
on the chance of his answer reaching his master's ears.

It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty;
as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which
are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage
of their savage masters.  It is an argument long since protested
against with noble feeling, and strikingly exemplified,
by the ever-illustrious Humboldt.  It is often attempted to
palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our
poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused
not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is
our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well
might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one
land, by showing that men in another land suffered from
some dreadful disease.  Those who look tenderly at the slave
owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put
themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless
prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself
the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and
your little children -- those objects which nature urges even
the slave to call his own -- being torn from you and sold
like beasts to the first bidder!  And these deeds are done
and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours
as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be
done on earth!  It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble,
to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants,
with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so
guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least
have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation,
to expiate our sin.


On the last day of August we anchored for the second time
at Porto Praya in the Cape de Verd archipelago; thence we
proceeded to the Azores, where we stayed six days.  On the
2nd of October we made the shore, of England; and at Falmouth
I left the Beagle, having lived on board the good little
vessel nearly five years.


Our Voyage having come to an end, I will take a short
retrospect of the advantages and disadvantages, the pains
and pleasures, of our circumnavigation of the world.  If a
person asked my advice, before undertaking a long voyage,
my answer would depend upon his possessing a decided taste
for some branch of knowledge, which could by this means be
advanced.  No doubt it is a high satisfaction to behold various
countries and the many races of mankind, but the pleasures
gained at the time do not counterbalance the evils.  It is
necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant
that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good
effected.

Many of the losses which must be experienced are obvious;
such as that of the society of every old friend, and of the
sight of those places with which every dearest remembrance
is so intimately connected.  These losses, however, are at
the time partly relieved by the exhaustless delight of
anticipating the long wished-for day of return.  If, as poets
say, life is a dream, I am sure in a voyage these are the
visions which best serve to pass away the long night.  Other
losses, although not at first felt, tell heavily after a period:
these are the want of room, of seclusion, of rest; the jading
feeling of constant hurry; the privation of small luxuries, the
loss of domestic society and even of music and the other
pleasures of imagination.  When such trifles are mentioned, it is
evident that the real grievances, excepting from accidents, of
a sea-life are at an end.  The short space of sixty years has
made an astonishing difference in the facility of distant
navigation.  Even in the time of Cook, a man who left
his fireside for such expeditions underwent severe privations.
A yacht now, with every luxury of life, can circumnavigate
the globe.  Besides the vast improvements in ships and
naval resources, the whole western shores of America are
thrown open, and Australia has become the capital of a
rising continent.  How different are the circumstances to a
man shipwrecked at the present day in the Pacific, to what
they were in the time of Cook!  Since his voyage a hemisphere
has been added to the civilized world.

If a person suffer much from sea-sickness, let him weigh
it heavily in the balance.  I speak from experience: it is no
trifling evil, cured in a week.  If, on the other hand, he take
pleasure in naval tactics, he will assuredly have full scope
for his taste.  But it must be borne in mind, how large a
proportion of the time, during a long voyage, is spent on
the water, as compared with the days in harbour.  And what
are the boasted glories of the illimitable ocean.  A tedious
waste, a desert of water, as the Arabian calls it.  No doubt
there are some delightful scenes.  A moonlight night, with
the clear heavens and the dark glittering sea, and the white
sails filled by the soft air of a gently blowing trade-wind, a
dead calm, with the heaving surface polished like a mirror,
and all still except the occasional flapping of the canvas.
It is well once to behold a squall with its rising arch and
coming fury, or the heavy gale of wind and mountainous
waves.  I confess, however, my imagination had painted
something more grand, more terrific in the full-grown storm.
It is an incomparably finer spectacle when beheld on shore,
where the waving trees, the wild flight of the birds, the
dark shadows and bright lights, the rushing of the torrents
all proclaim the strife of the unloosed elements.  At sea
the albatross and little petrel fly as if the storm were their
proper sphere, the water rises and sinks as if fulfilling its
usual task, the ship alone and its inhabitants seem the objects
of wrath.  On a forlorn and weather-beaten coast, the scene
is indeed different, but the feelings partake more of horror
than of wild delight.

Let us now look at the brighter side of the past time.  The
pleasure derived from beholding the scenery and the general
aspect of the various countries we have visited, has decidedly
been the most constant and highest source of enjoyment.  It
is probable that the picturesque beauty of many parts of
Europe exceeds anything which we beheld.  But there is a
growing pleasure in comparing the character of the scenery
in different countries, which to a certain degree is distinct
from merely admiring its beauty.  It depends chiefly on an
acquaintance with the individual parts of each view.  I am
strongly induced to believe that as in music, the person who
understands every note will, if he also possesses a proper
taste, more thoroughly enjoy the whole, so he who examines
each part of a fine view, may also thoroughly comprehend
the full and combined effect.  Hence, a traveller should be
a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief
embellishment.  Group masses of naked rock, even in the wildest
forms, and they may for a time afford a sublime spectacle,
but they will soon grow monotonous.  Paint them with bright
and varied colours, as in Northern Chile, they will become
fantastic; clothe them with vegetation, they must form a
decent, if not a beautiful picture.

When I say that the scenery of parts of Europe is probably
superior to anything which we beheld, I except, as a class by
itself, that of the intertropical zones.  The two classes cannot
be compared together; but I have already often enlarged on
the grandeur of those regions.  As the force of impressions
generally depends on preconceived ideas, I may add, that
mine were taken from the vivid descriptions in the Personal
Narrative of Humboldt, which far exceed in merit anything
else which I have read.  Yet with these high-wrought ideas,
my feelings were far from partaking of a tinge of disappointment
on my first and final landing on the shores of Brazil.

Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind,
none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by
the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers
of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego,
where Death and decay prevail.  Both are temples filled with
the varied productions of the God of Nature: -- no one can
stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is
more in man than the mere breath of his body.  In calling
up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia
frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced
by all wretched and useless.  They can be described
only by negative characters; without habitations, without
water, without trees, without mountains, they support merely
a few dwarf plants.  Why, then, and the case is not peculiar
to myself, have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on
my memory?  Why have not the still more level, the greener
and more fertile Pampas, which are serviceable to mankind,
produced an equal impression?  I can scarcely analyze these
feelings: but it must be partly owing to the free scope given
to the imagination.  The plains of Patagonia are boundless,
for they are scarcely passable, and hence unknown: they
bear the stamp of having lasted, as they are now, for ages,
and there appears no limit to their duration through future
time.  If, as the ancients supposed, the flat earth was
surrounded by an impassable breadth of water, or by deserts
heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look at these
last boundaries to man's knowledge with deep but ill-defined
sensations?

Lastly, of natural scenery, the views from lofty mountains,
through certainly in one sense not beautiful, are very
memorable.  When looking down from the highest crest of the
Cordillera, the mind, undisturbed by minute details, was
filled with the stupendous dimensions of the surrounding masses.

Of individual objects, perhaps nothing is more certain to
create astonishment than the first sight in his native haunt of
a barbarian -- of man in his lowest and most savage state.
One's mind hurries back over past centuries, and then asks,
could our progenitors have been men like these? -- men,
whose very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us
than those of the domesticated animals; men, who do not
possess the instinct of those animals, nor yet appear to boast
of human reason, or at least of arts consequent on that
reason.  I do not believe it is possible to describe or paint
the difference between savage and civilized man.  It is
the difference between a wild and tame animal: and part
of the interest in beholding a savage, is the same which
would lead every one to desire to see the lion in his desert,
the tiger tearing his prey in the jungle, or the rhinoceros
wandering over the wild plains of Africa.

Among the other most remarkable spectacles which we
have beheld, may be ranked, the Southern Cross, the cloud
of Magellan, and the other constellations of the southern
hemisphere -- the water-spout -- the glacier leading its blue
stream of ice, over-hanging the sea in a bold precipice -- a
lagoon-island raised by the reef-building corals -- an active
volcano -- and the overwhelming effects of a violent earthquake.
These latter phenomena, perhaps, possess for me a
peculiar interest, from their intimate connection with the
geological structure of the world.  The earthquake, however,
must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth,
considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity,
has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and
in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown,
we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.

It has been said, that the love of the chase is an inherent
delight in man -- a relic of an instinctive passion.  If so, I
am sure the pleasure of living in the open air, with the sky
for a roof and the ground for a table, is part of the same
feeling, it is the savage returning to his wild and native
habits.  I always look back to our boat cruises, and my land
journeys, when through unfrequented countries, with an extreme
delight, which no scenes of civilization could have
created.  I do not doubt that every traveller must remember
the glowing sense of happiness which he experienced, when
he first breathed in a foreign clime, where the civilized man
had seldom or never trod.

There are several other sources of enjoyment in a long
voyage, which are of a more reasonable nature.  The map
of the world ceases to be a blank; it becomes a picture full
of the most varied and animated figures.  Each part assumes
its proper dimensions: continents are not looked at in the
light of islands, or islands considered as mere specks, which
are, in truth, larger than many kingdoms of Europe.  Africa,
or North and South America, are well-sounding names, and
easily pronounced; but it is not until having sailed for
weeks along small portions of their shores, that one is
thoroughly convinced what vast spaces on our immense world
these names imply.

From seeing the present state, it is impossible not to look
forward with high expectations to the future progress of
nearly an entire hemisphere.  The march of improvement,
consequent on the introduction of Christianity throughout
the South Sea, probably stands by itself in the records of
history.  It is the more striking when we remember that only
sixty years since, Cook, whose excellent judgment none will
dispute, could foresee no prospect of a change.  Yet these
changes have now been effected by the philanthropic spirit
of the British nation.

In the same quarter of the globe Australia is rising, or
indeed may be said to have risen, into a grand centre of
civilization, which, at some not very remote period, will rule
as empress over the southern hemisphere.  It is impossible
for an Englishman to behold these distant colonies, without
a high pride and satisfaction.  To hoist the British flag,
seems to draw with it as a certain consequence, wealth,
prosperity, and civilization.

In conclusion, it appears to me that nothing can be more
improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant
countries.  It both sharpens, and partly allays that want and
craving, which, as Sir J. Herschel remarks, a man experiences
although every corporeal sense be fully satisfied.  The
excitement from the novelty of objects, and the chance of
success, stimulate him to increased activity.  Moreover, as a
number of isolated facts soon become uninteresting, the
habit of comparison leads to generalization.  On the other
hand, as the traveller stays but a short time in each place,
his descriptions must generally consist of mere sketches,
instead of detailed observations.  Hence arises, as I have found
to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps of
knowledge, by inaccurate and superficial hypotheses.

But I have too deeply enjoyed the voyage, not to recommend
any naturalist, although he must not expect to be so
fortunate in his companions as I have been, to take all
chances, and to start, on travels by land if possible, if
otherwise, on a long voyage.  He may feel assured, he will meet
with no difficulties or dangers, excepting in rare cases, nearly
so bad as he beforehand anticipates.  In a moral point of
view, the effect ought to be, to teach him good-humoured
patience, freedom from selfishness, the habit of acting for
himself, and of making the best of every occurrence.  In
short, he ought to partake of the characteristic qualities of
most sailors.  Travelling ought also to teach him distrust; but
at the same time he will discover, how many truly kind-hearted
people there are, with whom he never before had, or ever again
will have any further communication, who yet are ready to offer
him the most disinterested assistance.

[1] After the volumes of eloquence which have poured forth on
this subject, it is dangerous even to mention the tomb.  A
modern traveller, in twelve lines, burdens the poor little
island with the following titles, -- it is a grave, tomb,
pyramid, cemetery, sepulchre, catacomb, sarcophagus, minaret,
and mausoleum!

[2] It deserves notice, that all the many specimens of this
shell found by me in one spot, differ as a marked variety,
from another set of specimens procured from a different spot.

[3] Beatson's St. Helena.  Introductory chapter, p. 4.

[4] Among these few insects, I was surprised to find a small
Aphodius (nov. spec.) and an Oryctes, both extremely numerous
under dung.  When the island was discovered it certainly
possessed no quadruped, excepting perhaps a mouse: it becomes,
therefore, a difficult point to ascertain, whether these
stercovorous insects have since been imported by accident, or if
aborigines, on what food they formerly subsisted.  On the banks
of the Plata, where, from the vast number of cattle and horses,
the fine plains of turf are richly manured, it is vain to seek
the many kinds of dung-feeding beetles, which occur so
abundantly in Europe.  I observed only an Oryctes (the insects of
this genus in Europe generally feed on decayed vegetable matter)
and two species of Phanaeus, common in such situations.  On the
opposite side of the Cordillera in Chiloe, another species of
Phanaeus is exceedingly abundant, and it buries the dung of the
cattle in large earthen balls beneath the ground.  There is
reason to believe that the genus Phanaeus, before the
introduction of cattle, acted as scavengers to man.  In Europe,
beetles, which find support in the matter which has already
contributed towards the life of other and larger animals, are so
numerous that there must be considerably more than one hundred
different species.  Considering this, and observing what a
quantity of food of this kind is lost on the plains of La Plata,
I imagined I saw an instance where man had disturbed that chain,
by which so many animals are linked together in their native
country.  In Van Diemen's Land, however, I found four species of
Onthophagus, two of Aphodius, and one of a third genus, very
abundantly under the dung of cows; yet these latter animals had
been then introduced only thirty-three years.  Previous to that
time the kangaroo and some other small animals were the only
quadrupeds; and their dung is of a very different quality from
that of their successors introduced by man.  In England the
greater number of stercovorous beetles are confined in their
appetites; that is, they do not depend indifferently on any
quadruped for the means of subsistence.  The change, therefore,
in habits which must have taken place in Van Diemen's Land is
highly remarkable.  I am indebted to the Rev. F. W. Hope, who, I
hope, will permit me to call him my master in Entomology, for
giving me the names of the foregoing insects.

[5] Monats. der Konig. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin. Vom
April, 1845.

[6] I have described this Bar in detail, in the Lond. and
Edin. Phil. Mag., vol. xix. (1841), p. 257.





End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of The Voyage of the Beagle by Darwin