Their Numbers Have Of Course Been Greatly Reduced
In This Island, But The People Yet Count On Two Days'
Hunting Giving Them Food For The Rest Of The Week.
It is
said that formerly single vessels have taken away as many
as seven hundred, and that the ship's company of a frigate
some years since brought down in one day two hundred
tortoises to the beach.
September 29th. - We doubled the south-west extremity of
Albemarle Island, and the next day were nearly becalmed
between it and Narborough Island. Both are covered with
immense deluges of black naked lava, which have flowed either
over the rims of the great caldrons, like pitch over the
rim of a pot in which it has been boiled, or have burst forth
from smaller orifices on the flanks; in their descent they
have spread over miles of the sea-coast. On both of these
islands, eruptions are known to have taken place; and in
Albemarle, we saw a small jet of smoke curling from the
summit of one of the great craters. In the evening we
anchored in Bank's Cove, in Albemarle Island. The next
morning I went out walking. To the south of the broken
tuff-crater, in which the Beagle was anchored, there was
another beautifully symmetrical one of an elliptic form; its
longer axis was a little less than a mile, and its depth about
500 feet. At its bottom there was a shallow lake, in the
middle of which a tiny crater formed an islet.
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