3CO GALAPAGOS ARCHIPELAGO. [CHAP. xvn. 



23rd -The Beagle proceeded to Charles Island. This archi- 

 pelago has long been frequented, first by the bucaniers, 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 Eepublic 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 aboiind ; but there arc 

 no tree-ferns : I saw nowhere any member of the Palm family, 

 which is the more singular, as 360 miles northward, Cocos Island 

 take its name from the number of cocoa-nuts. The houses are 

 irregularly scattered over a flat space of ground, which is culti- 

 vated 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 mimbers 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 Albe- 

 marle Island, and the faext 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, wp saw a small jet of smoke curling from the 



