CAPTAIN TUCKEY'S NARRATIVE. 21 



affords for their cottons is excellent ; coffee is also produced 

 for consumption, and ^Adth common industry the now burnt- 

 up vallies might be covered with the cotton-shrub. Two or 

 three pitiful shops, containing the most heterogenous assort- 

 ment of goods, convey the only appearance of domestic com- 

 merce; in them we observed various kinds of EnoHsh cotton 

 goods and earthen ware ; the other objects, as hats, shoes, 

 &c. being of Portuguese fabric. 



Towards the sea shore, Avhere my own observations 

 ■\vei;e confined, St. Jago presents the most forbidding ap- 

 pearance of sterility, the whole surfice denoting the efiect 

 of some mighty convulsion, which piled matter upon matter 

 in what nuu^ be termed a regular confusion. The two 

 prominent forms arc those of platforms or table lands ge- 

 nerally cut perpendicular as a wall on one side, and level 

 with the neighbouring land on the other ; and series of per- 

 fectly conical hillocks diminishing in sii^e by regular gra- 

 dation. Besides these, vast irregular masses are scattered 

 over the interior of the island, forming shapeless mountains, 

 and Ions; serrated outlines. The whole of the elevated 

 grounds, which I passed over, are covered with loose blocks 

 of stone, basalt, lava, and other volcanic products, and the 

 beds of the numerous torrents, which were now quite dry, 

 shewed a covering of black basaltic sand. "\Vit.h the excep- 



