Illy, 183^. 



ST. HELENA. 



581 



labour. From the reduction in the number of public 

 servants owing to the island having been given up by the 

 East India Company, and the consequent emigration of 

 many of the richer people, the poverty probably will in- 

 crease. The chief food of the working class is rice with a 

 little salt meat ; as neither of these articles are the products 

 of the island, but must be purchased with money, the low 

 wages tell heavily on the poor people. The fine times, as 

 my old guide called them, when " Bony" was here, can 

 never return again. Now 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 mixed, 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 cha- 

 racter of the greater number among the lower classes. It 

 was strange to my ears to hear a man, nearly white, and re- 

 spectably dressed, talking with indifference of the times when 

 he was a slave. With my companion who carried our dinner 

 and a horn of water, which latter is quite necessary as all in 

 the lower valleys is saline, I every day took long walks. 



Beneath the limits of the elevated and central green circle, 

 the wild valleys are quite desolate and untenanted. Here, 

 to the geologist, there are scenes of high interest, which 

 show the successive changes, and complicated disturbances 

 which have in past times happened. 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 removed by the waves of the sea. 

 There is, moreover, an external margin of black volcanic 

 rocks, which belong to an anterior condition of things. 

 These have been dislocated and broken up by forces acting 



