1835. 



TERRAPIN TREES ROCKS. 



487 



broken lava. Walking is extremely difficult. A hand-barrow 

 was lying at the landing-place, which showed that terrapin 

 were to be got near us, though we did not then see any. The 

 men from whalers and sealing vessels carry the large terrapin, 

 or land-tortoises, on these barrows. 



Ascending a little hill, we were surprised to find much 

 brush or underwood, and trees of considerable size, as large in 

 the trunk as one man could clasp. These were prickly pears, 

 and a kind of gum-tree : how their roots are able to penetrate, 

 or derive nourishment from the hard lava, it is hard to say ; 

 for earth there is scarcely any. Wild cotton shrubs are nume- 

 rous. This first excursion had no tendency to raise our ideas 

 of the Galapagos Islands. 



17th. Weighed and stood alongshore, sounding. There was 

 good anchorage, until near the south-west point of Stephens 

 Bay, off which the water is shoal, and the bottom uneven. We 

 anchored in Stephens Bay, and found an American whaler 

 lying there. This bay is large, and the anchoring ground gene- 

 rally good ; but the landing is bad at low water. There is no 

 fresh water : and it is frequently difficult to enter, as well as to 

 leave, because usually becalmed by high land, it seldom feels 

 the true wind. Enderby Cove is only fit for a boat ; at 

 low water it is full of rocks. The Kicker Rock is a curious 

 mass of stone, rising almost perpendicularly from the bottom 

 of the sea, where it is thirty fathoms deep ; and in the offing is 

 another (called the Dalrymple, by Colnett), which looks exactly 

 like a ship becalmed, with all sail set. Seeing a remarkable 

 hill at the north-east side of the bay, which had not an appear- 

 ance like other parts of the island, I went to it in a boat, hoping 

 to find water near the foot, and to have a good view from the 

 summit. Disappointed in both ways, the hill being composed 

 of a crumbling sand-stone, and almost inaccessible, I returned 

 to the ship early next morning. Several new birds were seen by 

 those who were on shore, and many fish were caught on board, 

 of which the best and most numerous were a kind of rock cod, 

 of large size. 



18th. Weighed and stood alongshore until noon, when we 



