CAPTAIN TUCKEY’S NARRATIVE, 21 
affords for their cottons is excellent ; coffee is also produced 
for consumption, and with common industry the now burnt- 
up vallies might be covered with the cotton-shrub. T'wo or 
three pitiful shops, containing the most heterogenous assort- 
ment of goods, convey the only appearance of domestic com- 
merce ; in them we observed various kinds of English cotton 
goods and earthen ware; the other objects, as hats, shoes, 
&c. being of Portuguese fabric. 
Towards the sea shore, where my own observations 
were confined, St. Jago presents the most forbidding ap- 
pearance of sterility, the whole surface denoting the effect 
of some mighty convulsion, which piled matter upon matter 
in what may be termed a regular confusion. The two 
prominent forms are those of platforms or table lands ge- 
nerally cut perpendicular as a wall on one side, and level 
with the neighbouring land on the other ; and series of per- 
fectly conical hillocks diminishing in size by regular gra- 
dation. Besides these, vast irregular masses are scattered 
over the interior of the island, forming shapeless mountains, 
and long serrated outlines. The whole of the elevated 
grounds, which I passed over, are covered with loose blocks 
of stone, basalt, lava, and other volcanic products, and the 
beds of the numerous torrents, which were now quite dry, 
shewed a covering of black basaltic sand. With the excep- 
