,g 3 -.] THE SETTLEMENT. 273 



few dull-coloured birds cared no more for me, than the> did for the 

 great tortoises. 



September iyd. The Beagle proceeded to Charles Island. This 

 archipelago has long been frequented, first by the Buccaneers, 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 la 

 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 29^. We doubled the south-west extremity of Albemarle 

 Island, and the next day were nearly becalmed between it and Nar- 

 borough 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 Banks' 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. 



