444 CAPE OF GOOD HOPE TO ENGLAND CH. XIX 
of Mr. Maskelyne, who was sent out to this island by the 
Royal Society for the purpose of observing the transit of 
Venus in the year [1761]. 
Some Account of St. Helena. 
This small island, which is no more than twelve miles 
long and seven broad, is situated in a manner in the middle 
of the vast Atlantic Ocean, being 400 leagues distant from 
the coast of Africa and above 600 from that of America. 
It appears to be, or rather is, the summit of some immense 
mountain, which towering far above the level of the earth 
(in this part of the globe very much depressed) elevates itself 
even considerably above the surface of the sea, which covers 
its highest neighbours with a body of water even to this time 
unfathomable by the researches of mankind. 
The higher parts of all countries have been observed 
almost without exception to be the seats of volcanoes,’ while 
the lower parts are much more seldom found to be so. Etna 
and Vesuvius have no land higher than themselves in their 
neighbourhood. Hecla is the highest hill in Iceland; in the 
highest parts of the Andes in South America volcanoes are 
frequent, and the Pike of Teneriffe is still on fire. These 
still continue to burn, but numberless others have been 
found to show evident marks of fire, although now extinct 
from the times of our earliest traditions. 
That this has been the case with St. Helena, and that the 
great inequalities of the ground there have been originally 
caused by the sinking of the ground, easily appears to an 
observing eye, who compares the opposite ridges, which, though 
separated always by deep and sometimes by tolerably broad 
valleys, have such a perfect similarity in appearance as well 
as in direction as scarce leaves room for a doubt that they 
formerly made part of a much less uneven surface, and that 
this sinking in of the earth has been occasioned by sub- 
terraneous fires. The stones abundantly testify to this, as 
they universally show marks of having been at some time 
1 This is not accurate ; nor is Hecla the highest mountain in Iceland. 
