314 
SAINT HELENA. 
setifolia, the Jatropha elastica , or India-rubber tree, the Croton sebife- 
rum , or tallow-tree, the Camellia oleifera and Japonica , the tea-plant, 
and various species of Cassia and Mimosa grew in this enchanting 
spot in all their native beauty. In fact, every quarter of the world 
seemed to have afforded its choicest plants ; and every plant to have 
found a congenial soil and climate. Such a peculiar adaptation of 
circumstances to the healthy growth of plants from all latitudes is 
the probable consequence of the equal temperature which prevails 
at the elevation of Plantation House, where the thermometer seldom 
rises above 78° or falls below 66°. Thus the productions of hot 
climates are not blasted by cold, nor those of the temperate zones 
withered by heat. 
The geological facts observable in St. Helena are not many, or of 
very great importance. Those which generally present themselves 
are the alternate beds of lava, which seem to constitute whole moun- 
tains ; and the immense perpendicular ridges of black rock, which 
traverse like huge walls the whole extent of the island. The beds are 
often exposed at the waterfalls, and exhibit a very definite, and, 
as far as I could trace, undeviating order. In a waterfall near 
the Friar’s Ridge I had a good opportunity of examining them. A 
face of rock about a hundred feet in height was made up of successive 
beds in the following order : the lowermost was composed of a 
red ochreous clay of considerable depth ; resting upon this, and 
passing into it, was a bed of light porous lava in fragments ; on this 
rested a bed of compact lava, scarcely at all porous, and passing into 
a superincumbent bed of very compact dark-coloured rock, not dis- 
tinguishable from basalt. 
The Friar’s Ridge owes its name to several masses of rock, 
which, piled on each other to the height of about twenty feet, rest 
insulated on its top, and seen from below have the appearance 
of a monk enveloped in his cowl : a stranger often mistakes them 
for a man standing on its summit. On a near approach they seem 
to alter their form, and strikingly represent a gipsey with a child 
at her back. On a close examination they are found to consist of 
