Indeed
The Whole Island May Be Compared To A Huge Ship Kept
In First-Rate Order.
I could not help, when admiring the
active industry, which had created such effects out of such
means, at the same time regretting that it had been wasted on
so poor and trifling an end.
M. Lesson has remarked with
justice, that the English nation would have thought of making
the island of Ascension a productive spot, any other
people would have held it as a mere fortress in the ocean.
Near this coast nothing grows; further inland, an occasional
green castor-oil plant, and a few grasshoppers, true
friends of the desert, may be met with. Some grass is scattered
over the surface of the central elevated region, and the
whole much resembles the worse parts of the Welsh mountains.
But scanty as the pasture appears, about six hundred
sheep, many goats, a few cows and horses, all thrive well on
it. Of native animals, land-crabs and rats swarm in numbers.
Whether the rat is really indigenous, may well be doubted;
there are two varieties as described by Mr. Waterhouse;
one is of a black colour, with fine glossy fur, and
lives on the grassy summit, the other is brown-coloured and
less glossy, with longer hairs, and lives near the settlement
on the coast. Both these varieties are one-third smaller than
the common black rat (M. rattus); and they differ from it
both in the colour and character of their fur, but in no
other essential respect.
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