1835.] AT CHARLES ISLAND. 371 



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. In 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 2(^th. — We doubled the south-west extremity of 

 Albemarle Island, and the next day were nearly becalmed 

 between it and Narborough 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 s.r.v .1 ^n.:.Il i.( of smoke curling from the 



