On Viewing The Island
From An Eminence, The First Circumstance Which Strikes One,
Is The Number Of The Roads And Forts:
The labour bestowed
on the public works, if one forgets its character as a prison,
seems out of all proportion to its extent or value.
There
is so little level or useful land, that it seems surprising how
so many people, about 5000, can subsist here. The lower
orders, or the emancipated slaves, are I believe extremely
poor: they complain of the want of work. From the reduction
in the number of public servants owing to the island
having been given up by the East Indian Company, and the
consequent emigration of many of the richer people, the
poverty probably will increase. 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.
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 crossed, 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 character of the greater number of the lower
classes. It was strange to my ears to hear a man, nearly
white and respectably dressed, talking with indifference of
the times when he was a slave. With my companion, who
carried our dinners and a horn of water, which is quite
necessary, as all the water in the lower valleys is saline, I
every day took long walks.
Beneath the upper and central green circle, the wild valleys
are quite desolate and untenanted. Here, to the geologist,
there were scenes of high interest, showing successive
changes and complicated disturbances. 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 entirely removed by the
waves of the sea: there is, moreover, an external wall of
black basaltic rocks, like the coast-mountains of Mauritius,
which are older than the central volcanic streams. On the
higher parts of the island, considerable numbers of a shell,
long thought to be a marine species occur imbedded in the soil.
It proved to be a Cochlogena, or land-shell of a very
peculiar form; [2] with it I found six other kinds; and in
another spot an eighth species. It is remarkable that none
of them are now found living.
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