ASCENSION. 
317 
to think that his health had at all suffered from his captivity. On 
the contrary, his repletion seemed to be the consequence of active 
nourishment. His form had all that tone, and his movement all that 
elasticity, which indicate and spring from powerful health. Indeed, 
whatever sympathy we felt for the situation of any of the prisoners, 
received no increase from any commiseration for their bodily suffer- 
ings : they were all in excellent plight. 
On the morning of the 29th, the day after our interview with 
Napoleon, we took leave of St. Helena, and on the 7th of July 
made the island of Ascension. 
After leaving St. Helena we imagined that no coast could appear 
comparatively barren ; but found the island of Ascension still more 
dreary. On approaching the former, a speck of green here and there 
relieved the prevailing sterility ; but the shores of the latter only 
exhibited hills formed of red volcanic ash, and columnar masses of 
black lava rising; through it. 
A half hour’s visit to the island was my only opportunity of ob- 
serving its interesting characters. I landed amidst some large rocks 
of vesicular lava, which projected from a sandy beach into the sea. 
Passing on towards one of the red conical hills, I found lava in dis- 
tinct blocks, and ridges, every where pushing through the surface. 
The more compact, of a very basaltic character, contained crystals of 
olivine. The more vesicular had crystals resembling zeolite. The 
surface of the hill was composed of small masses of a red and very 
friable cinder, resting on a powder of the same substance. A short 
distance up its acclivity, two white bodies, not a little puzzling when 
seen at a distance, seem to rise through the soil. On examination 
they proved to be tombstones, erected to the memory of two seamen 
who had died in their vessels off the island. These stones were 
curious from being sonorous, and having been formed from consi- 
derable beds, or rather slabs of stone, found on the beach, and which 
are formed of the fragments of shells cohering together. They 
exactly resemble, except in being of a coarser grain, the rock in 
which the human skeletons of Guadaloupe have been found. 
