GO BERTHA'S VISIT TO HER 



pot, though without a bottom ; but he had fitted 

 a wooden one to it, and when he had occasion 

 to boil any thing, he plunged the pot into the 

 earth, and kindled a fire round its sides. 



" We made an excursion to the interior, and 

 found many beautiful plants and shrubs. The 

 dry soil was covered by an evergreen arbutus, 

 and a shrubby campanula, and every sheltered 

 rock afforded a different species of fern, the 

 greatest vegetable ornament of the island. We 

 refreshed ourselves with strawberries, which 

 were small and pale, but of a very agreeable 

 flavour; and the vine plants were loaded with 

 grapes; they were still unripe." 



I am quite disappointed at Mr. Scouler's not 

 mentioning the myrtle trees described in Anson's 

 Voyage, that tall wood of myrtles that screened 

 the lawn where the commodore had pitched his 

 tent ; and which, sweeping round it, in the form 

 of a theatre, extended up to the rising ground. 

 I should like to have known what species of 

 myrtle produced timber of forty feet in length. 

 But above all, I felt disappointed at his account 

 of the cavern ; I was thinking of Alexander 

 Selkirk, and could not help hoping that it was 

 to prove the very one in which he had lived ; or 

 perhaps that some other romantic Selkirk was 

 then its solitary master, instead of those Chilian 

 cattle-killers. 



