514 CHARLES DARWIN 



poor : they complain of the want of work. From the reduc- 

 tion in the number of public servants, owing to the island 

 having been given up by the East Indian Company, and the 

 consequent emigration of many of the richer people, the 

 poverty probably will increase. The chief food of the work- 

 ing class is rice with a little salt meat; as neither of these 

 articles are the products of the island, but must be purchased 

 with money, the low wages tell heavily on the poor people. 

 Now that the people are blessed with freedom, a right which 

 I believe they value fully, it seems probable that their num- 

 bers will quickly increase: if so, what is to become of the 

 little state of St. Helena? 



My guide was an elderly man, who had been a goatherd 

 when a boy, and knew every step amongst the rocks. He 

 was of a race many times crossed, and although with a 

 dusky skin, he had not the disagreeable expression of a 

 mulatto. He was a very civil, quiet old man, and such 

 appears the character of the greater number of the lower 

 classes. It was strange to my ears to hear a man, nearly 

 white and respectably dressed, talking with indifference of 

 the times when he was a slave. With my companion, who 

 carried our dinners and a horn of water, which is quite 

 necessary, as all the water in the lower valleys is saline, I 

 every day took long walks. 



Beneath the upper and central green circle, the wild val- 

 leys are quite desolate and untenanted. Here, to the geolo- 

 gist, there were scenes of high interest, showing successive 

 changes and complicated disturbances. According to my 

 views, St. Helena has existed as an island from a very 

 remote epoch: some obscure proofs, however, of the eleva- 

 tion of the land are still extant. I believe that the central 

 and highest peaks form parts of the rim of a great crater, 

 the southern half of which has been entirely removed by the 

 waves of the sea: there is, moreover, an external wall of 

 black basaltic rocks, like the coast-mountains of Mauritius, 

 which are older than the central volcanic streams. On the 

 higher parts of the island, considerable numbers of a shell, 

 long thought to be a marine species, occur imbedded in the 

 soil. 



It proved to be a Cochlogena, or land-shell of a very 



