348 JOURNAL. 
reported there are some plains and arable land. I watched them 
ascend up a very high peak, and then went ashore with Glennie and 
others to walk about and dine; I found His Lordship’s party re- 
turned from their walk much disappointed. The boatswain of the 
brig, who had been for several days on the island some years before, 
had undertaken to guide them; but instead of leading them to the 
ridge of the highest land, he only conducted them with much labour 
to the top of a fearful pinnacle, whose height is about 1500 feet ; but 
as it is surrounded by still higher rocks, nothing more was to be 
seen from it than from below. Lord Cochrane brought from the 
summit a piece of heavy black porous lava; and under that he found 
some dark hardened clay full of cells, the inside of which appear 
slightly vitrified. The island seems chiefly composed of this porous 
lava; the strata of which, being crossed at right angles by a very 
compact black lava, dip on the eastern side of the island about 22°, 
and on the west side 16°, pointing to the centre of the island as an 
apex. The valleys are exceedingly fertile, and watered by copious 
streams, which occasionally form small marshes, where the panke 
grows very luxuriantly, as well as water-cress and other aquatic 
plants. The soil is generally of a reddish brown: there are several 
small hills and banks of bright-red clay; and I thought I found 
puzzolano, and some fragments of coarse pumice-stone. The 
little valley where the town is, or rather was, is exceedingly beau- 
tiful.. It is full of fruit trees, and flowers, and sweet herbs, now 
grown wild: near the shore it is covered with radish and sea-side 
oats. The colony of Juan Fernandez had been used as a place of 
confinement for state-prisoners. I do not know in what precise year 
it was founded ; but it could not have been long before the revolution 
in Chile, as I find over the door of the ruined church the following 
inscription : — 
“ La casa de Dios es la puerta del cielo y 
Se coloco, 24 Setembre, de 1811.” 
A small fort was situated on the sea-shore, of which there is 
now nothing visible but the ditches and part of one wall. Another, 
