472 ASCENSION. L./iiAf. xxi. 



active industry, which had created such effects out of such means, 

 at the same time regretting that it had been wasted ou 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 resembles 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 described 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, and, as at the Galapagos, have 

 varied from the effect of the new conditions to which they have 

 been exposed : hence the variety on the summit of the island differs 

 from that on the coast. Of native birds there are none ; but the 

 guinea-fowl, imported from the Cape de Verd Islands, is abundant, 

 and the common fowl has likewise run wild. Some cats, which 

 were originally turned ont to destroy the rats and mice, have 

 increased, so as to become a great plague. The island is entirely 

 without trees, in which, and in every other respect, it is very far 

 inferior to St. Helena. 



One of my excursions took me towards the S.W. extremity of the 

 island. The day was clear and hot, and I saw the island, not 

 smiling with beauty, but staring with naked hideousness. The 

 lava streams are covered with hummocks, and are rugged to a 

 degree which, geologically speaking, is not of easy explanation. 

 The intervening spaces are concealed with layers of pumice, ashes, 

 and volcanic tuff. Whilst passing this end of the island at sea, I 

 could not imagine what the white patches were with which the 



