Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/507

Rh pieces of the wood are frequently found in the valleys, of a fine black colour, and of a hardness almost equal to iron; these, however, are almost always so short and so crooked that no use has yet been made of them. Whether the tree is the same as that which produces ebony on the Isle of Bourbon and the adjacent islands is impossible to know, as the French have not yet published any account of it. Other species of trees and plants, which seem to have been originally natives of the island, are few in number. Insects there are also a few, and one species of snail, which inhabits only the tops of the highest ridges, and has probably been there ever since their original creation.

Had our stay upon the island been longer, we should in all probability have discovered some more natural productions, but in all likelihood not many; secluded as this rock is from the rest of the world by seas of immense extent, it is difficult to imagine how anything not originally created in that spot could by any accident arrive at it. For my part I confess I feel more wonder at finding a little snail on the top of the ridges of St. Helena, than in finding people upon America, or any other part of the globe.

As the benefits of the land are so limited, the sea must often be applied to by the natives of this little rock; nor is she unmindful of their necessities, for she constantly supplies immense plenty, and no less variety, of fish. She would indeed be culpable did she do otherwise: she never met with a calamity equal to that of the earth in the general deluge, and her children, moreover, have the advantage of a free intercourse with all parts of the globe, habitable to them, without being driven to the necessity of tempting the dangers of an element unsuited to their natures; a fatal necessity under which too many even of us, lords of the creation, yearly perish, and of all others through the wide bounds of creation how vast a proportion must die. The seed of a thistle supported by its down, the insect by its weak, and the bird by its more able, wing, may tempt the dangers of the sea; but of these how many millions must perish for one which arrives at the distance of twelve