488 ST. HELENA, [CHAP. XXL 
that the people are blessed with freedom, a right which I believe 
they value fully, it seems probable that their numbers 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 valleys 
are quite desolate and untenanted. Here, to the geologist, 
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 elevation 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, con- 
siderable numbers of a shell, long thought a marine species, 
occur embedded in the soil. -It proves to be a Cochlogena, 
or land-shell of a very peculiar form;* with it I found six 
other kinds; and in another ‘spot an eighth species. It is 
remarkable that none of them-are now found living. Their 
extinction has probably been catised by the entire destruction 
of the woods, and the consequent loss of: food and shelter, 
which occurred during the early part of the last century. 
The history of the changes, which the elevated plains of 
* It deserves notice, that all the many specimens of this shell found by 
me in one spot, differ, as a marked variety, from another set of specimeus 
procured from a different spot. 
* 
