422 BAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. [Oh. XXIV.. 



save the labour of walking in a country where the surface of 

 the ground is heaped with rough and sharp-pointed cinders, 

 which look like the product of a myriad furnaces, and to 

 which the " black country " of Staffordshire is a trifle. From 

 these arise conical hills of a reddish colour, covered with 

 fine ashes, which crackle under the feet, and from out of 

 which peep the rounded overhanging ledges formed by molten 

 lava. Down these hills streams of water have poured during 

 the brief and uncertaiu wet seasons, forming water-courses 

 which run between the rounded knolls, which look like roches 

 moutonnees at the base, and intersect the lava-fields down to 

 the beach. For rain falls occasionally on the island, though 

 unfrequently ; and on the day of our arrival it was wet : it 

 rained all night, and next morning Green Mountain was 

 enveloped in cloud. Other hills are hollow and crateriform, 

 the sides formed of loose masses of slag or clinker of various 

 sizes. Up one of these I clambered, and found the interior 

 deep and cup-shaped, but incomplete on one side, the bottom 

 beiug a small level deposit of mud and sand, produced by 

 the washings of the cinders in wet weather ; among these 

 cinders I found several fragments of exploded volcanic bombs, 

 such as are described and figured by Mr. Darwin in his notice 

 of the island. 



From this elevation the view was most striking : a deep 

 and broad rocky vaUey in the fore ground, covered with 

 screaming sea-fowl, beyond which arose an irregular series 

 of naked and desolate conical hUls piled one above another 

 in chaotic confusion, but surmounted by the verdant and 

 fertile heights of Green Mountain, upon which may be de- 

 scried trees, meadows and pastures, like the Delectable Moun- 

 tains seen afar off by the pilgrims. 



It must not be supposed, however, that the surface of the 



