488 ST. HELENA. 



j CHAP. XXI 



that the people are blessed with freedom, a right which I believe 

 (hey 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 

 lias 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, con- 

 siderable numbers of a shell, long thought a marine species, 

 occur embedded in the soil. It proves to be a Cochlogena, 

 or land-shell of a very peculiar form ; * 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 



* 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 specimen! 

 procured from a different spot. 



