Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.3)

uly, 1836. 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 " Bon}^' 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 sahne, 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 compUcated 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