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. Their extinction has probably
been caused by the entire destruction of the woods, and
the consequent loss of food and shelter, which occurred
during the early part of the last century.
The history of the changes, which the elevated plains of
Longwood and Deadwood have undergone, as given in General
Beatson's account of the island, is extremely curious.
Both plains, it is said in former times were covered with
wood, and were therefore called the Great Wood.
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