492 ASCENSION. 



L CHAP. XXi. 



aient. There is not a private person on the island. Many of 

 the marines appeared well contented with their situation ; they 

 think it better to serve their one-and-twenty years on shore, et 

 it be what it may, than in a ship ; in this choice, if I were a 

 marine, I should most heartily agree. 



The next morning I ascended Green Hill, 2840 feet high, 

 and thence walked across the island to the windward point. A 

 good cart-road leads from the coast-settlement to the houses, 

 gardens, and fields, placed near the summit of the central moun- 

 tain. On the roadside there are milestones, and likewise cis- 

 terns, where each thirsty passer-by can drink some good water. 

 Similar care is displayed in each part of the establishment, and 

 especially in the management of the springs, so that a single 

 drop of water may not be lost : indeed the whole island may be 

 compared to a huge ship kept in first-rate order. I could not 

 help, when admiring the active industry which had created such 

 effects out of such means, at the same time regretting that it had 

 been wasted on so poor and trifling an end. M. Lesson has 

 remarked with justice, that the English nation alone would have 

 thought of making the island of Ascension a productive spot ; 

 any other people would have held it as a mere fortress in the 

 ocean. 



Near this coast nothing grows ; further inland, an occasional 

 green castor- oil plant, and a few grasshoppers, true friends of 

 the desert, may be met with. Some grass is scattered over the 

 surface of the central elevated region, and the whole much re- 

 sembles the worse parts of the Welsh mountains. But scanty as 

 the pasture appears, about six hundred sheep, many goats, a few 

 cows and horses, all thrive well on it. Of native animals, land- 

 crabs and rats swarm in numbers. "Whether the rat is really 

 indigenous, may well be doubted ; there are two varieties as de- 

 scribed by Mr. Waterhouse ; one is of a black colour, with fine 

 glossy fur, and lives on the grassy summit ; the other is brown- 

 coloured and less glossy, with longer hairs, and lives near the 

 settlement on the coast. Both these varieties are one-third 

 smaller than the common black rat (M. rattus) ; and they differ 

 from it both in the colour and character of their fur, but in no 

 other essential respect. I can hardly doubt that these rats (like 

 the common mouse, which has also run wild) have been /imported, 



