These Saucer-Shaped Layers
Crop Out On The Margin, Forming Perfect Rings Of Many Different
Colours, Giving To The Summit
A most fantastic appearance;
one of these rings is white and broad, and resembles
a course round which horses have
Been exercised; hence the
hill has been called the Devil's Riding School. I brought away
specimens of one of the tufaceous layers of a pinkish colour and
it is a most extraordinary fact, that Professor Ehrenberg [5]
finds it almost wholly composed of matter which has been
organized: he detects in it some siliceous-shielded fresh-water
infusoria, and no less than twenty-five different kinds
of the siliceous tissue of plants, chiefly of grasses. From
the absence of all carbonaceous matter, Professor Ehrenberg
believes that these organic bodies have passed through the
volcanic fire, and have been erupted in the state in which
we now see them. The appearance of the layers induced me
to believe that they had been deposited under water, though
from the extreme dryness of the climate I was forced to imagine,
that torrents of rain had probably fallen during some
great eruption, and that thus a temporary lake had been
formed into which the ashes fell. But it may now be suspected
that the lake was not a temporary one. Anyhow, we
may feel sure, that at some former epoch the climate and
productions of Ascension were very different from what
they now are. Where on the face of the earth can we find
a spot, on which close investigation will not discover signs
of that endless cycle of change, to which this earth has been,
is, and will be subjected?
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