Dr« Skey on the Geology of Barbadoes, 237 



The land is seen to rise in a gentle swell from the coast towards 

 the middle of the island, excepting in a small district hereafter to 

 be noticed ; its highest hills have no great elevation, probably not 

 exceeding eight or nine hundred feet, and their general direction is 

 I think nearly north-west and south-east : its shores have no bold 

 promontories nor rocky headlands, excepting in some few spots 

 upon the windward, or north-eastern coast, which indeed is of a 

 bolder character, as is the case with all the islands in these seas 

 of which I have knowledge ; perhaps too the shore is more abrupt 

 at the opposite extremity of the island, the line of hills, which may 

 be said in a general way to pass through the middle of the island, 

 terminating here also in rocks of moderate height. 



I understand that Barbadoes is similar in appearance and in 

 structure to a few of the other islands in this Archipelago ; to wit, 

 that half of Guadaloupe which is called Grande-Terre, and which 

 indeed forms a separate island from Basse-Terre, the two divisions 

 having a channel, occasionally, if not always, filled. Marigalante, 

 Antigua, and Santa Cruz also have a common structure with Bar- 

 badoes ; they all agree in being of moderate elevation, have no vol- 

 canic traces, and are all formed of limestone rock ; of this however 

 I have no personal knowledge. Barbadoes is in great part composed 

 of fossil madrepores, and traces of organic structure are to be met 

 with in almost every part of the island. These remains are par- 

 ticularly discoverable along the whole of the south and south-west 

 or leeward coast, and here I think the rocks assume a form which, 

 although it obtains more or less in every part of the island, is here 

 most discernible. The land, which when seen from the sea ap- 

 pears to rise uniformly from the coast, is observed on a nearer view 

 to consist of sucessive terraces rising in two or three gradations one 

 above the other ; each terrace forming a plain of a quarter or half a 



