SUNDAY, MAY 1, 1836.
I took a quiet walk along the sea-coast to the north of the town.
The plain in this part is quite uncultivated; it consists of a
field of black lava, smoothed over with coarse grass and bushes,
the latter being chiefly Mimosas. The scenery may be described as
intermediate in character between that of the Galapagos and of
Tahiti; but this will convey a definite idea to very few persons.
It is a very pleasant country, but it has not the charms of Tahiti,
or the grandeur of Brazil. The next day I ascended La Pouce, a
mountain so called from a thumb-like projection, which rises close
behind the town to a height of 2,600 feet. The centre of the island
consists of a great platform, surrounded by old broken basaltic
mountains, with their strata dipping seawards. The central
platform, formed of comparatively recent streams of lava, is of an
oval shape, thirteen geographical miles across in the line of its
shorter axis. The exterior bounding mountains come into that class
of structures called Craters of Elevation, which are supposed to
have been formed not like ordinary craters, but by a great and
sudden upheaval. There appear to me to be insuperable objections to
this view: on the other hand, I can hardly believe, in this and in
some other cases, that these marginal crateriform mountains are
merely the basal remnants of immense volcanos, of which the summits
either have been blown off or swallowed up in subterranean abysses.
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