296 ISLAI^TD LIFE 



chose out their settlements and made plantations ; but if 

 wells, could be sunk, which the governor says he will 

 attempt w^hen we have more hands, we should then think 

 it the most pleasant and healthiest part of the island. 

 But as to healthiness, we don't think it will hold so if the 

 wood that keeps the land w^arm w^ere destroyed, for then 

 the rains, which are violent here, w'ould carry away the 

 upper soil, and it being ^ clay marl underneath would 

 produce but little ; as it is, w^e think in case it were 

 enclosed it might be greatly improved "....'•' AYhen 

 once this wood is gone the island will soon be ruined " . . . , 

 " We viewed the wood's end wdiich joins the Honourable 

 ComiDany's plantation called the Hutts, but the w^ood is so 

 destroyed that the beginning of the Great Wood is now a 

 whole mile beyond that place, and all the soil between being 

 washed away, that distance is now entirely barren." (MSS. 

 records, 1716.) In 1709 the governor rejDorted to the 

 Court of Directors of the East India Company that the 

 timber w as rapidly disappearing, and that the goats should 

 be destroyed for the preservation of the ebony wood, and 

 because the island w'as suffering from droughts. The reply 

 w^as, " The goats are not to be destroyed, being more 

 valuable than ebony." Thus, through the gross ignorance 

 of those in power, the last opportunity of preserving the 

 peculiar vegetation of St. Helena, and j^re venting the 

 island from becoming the comparatively rocky desert it 

 now is, w^as allowed to pass away.^ Even in a mere 



^ Mr. Marsh in liis interesting work entitled The Earth as Modified hy 

 Human Action (p. 51), thu3 remarks on the elfect of browsing quadrupeds 

 in destroying and cheeking woody vegetation. — "I am convinced that 

 forests would soon cover many parts of the Arabian and African deserts 

 if man and domestic animals, especially the goat and the camel, Avere 

 banished from them. The hard palate and tongue, and strong teeth and 

 jaws of this latter quadruped enable him to break off and masticate tough 

 and thorny branches as large as the finger. He is j^articularly fond of the 

 smaller twigs, leaves, and seed-jiods of the Sent and other acacias, which, 

 like the American robinia, thrive well on dry and sandy soils, and he 

 spares no tree the branches of which are within his reach, except, if I 

 remember right, the tamarisk that produces manna. Young trees sprout 

 plentifully around the springs and along the winter water-courses of the 

 desert, and these are just the halting stations of the caravans and their 

 routes of travel. In the shade of these trees annual grasses and perennial 

 shrubs shoot up, but are mown down by the hungry cattle of the Bedouin 



