Similar care is displayed in
each part of the establishment, and especially in the management of
the springs, so that a single drop of water may not be lost: 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; farther 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.
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