12 BARREN ISLAND AND ARCHIPELAGO 



The only inhabitants of any size that the island can boast of 

 are a large herd of goats, whose well-worn tracks show plainly on 

 every slope and cliff. A score of these animals, left in 1891 by the 

 station steamer from Port Blair, have so thriven that their 

 descendants must now be numbered in hundreds, and are so free 

 from fear, and unsuspicious, that had we needed them we could 

 have butchered any quantity. 



From the landing-place the ground slopes gently upward to the 

 floor of the crater, which is about 50 feet above sea level. In the 

 centre of this rises the little cone of slightly truncated form. 

 Symmetrical in outline, 1000 feet high and perhaps 2000 feet in 

 diameter at the base, there is nothing it reminds one of more 

 closely than a huge heap of purplish-black coal-dust, with patches 

 and streaks of brown on the top. 



To right and left of the base, and thence towards the sea, flows 

 a broad black stream of clinkery lava, the masses of which it is 

 composed varying in dimensions from rugged blocks of scoriae a 

 ton or more in weight to pieces the size of one's fist. The journey 

 across it would be one of some difficulty, were it not that the 

 goats, coming from all parts of the island in their need for water, 

 by constantly travelling to and fro in the same line, have worn a 

 smooth and deep path from side to side, some 200 yards distant 

 from the sea. 



The level ground at the base of the cone, widest on the 

 southern side, is covered with tall bamboo grass and various 

 kinds of low bushes. On the inner slopes of the crater, the 

 south and east sides, which are of rocky formation, support a 

 certain amount of small forest, in which we quickly noticed the 

 absence of such tropical forms as palms, rattans and lianas, and 

 of trees more than 60 or 70 feet high and 4 or 5 feet in diameter ; * 



the same date Dr von Liebig records a broad but thin sheet of nearly boiHng 

 water issuing from beneath the lava, and the sea warm for many yards to a 

 depth of more than 8 feet. Earlier still, in 1831, we have Dr Adam's account, 

 which states that 100 yards from shore the water was nearly boiling ; the stones 

 and rocks on shore exposed at low tide were smoking and hissing, and the 

 water was boiling all round them. 



* In 1789 only withered shrubs and blasted trees were to be seen on parts 



