Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 3.djvu/245



The land is seen to rise in a gentle swell from the coast towards the middle of the island, excepting in a small district hereafter to be noticed; its highest hills have no great elevation, probably not exceeding eight or nine hundred feet, and their general direction is I think nearly north-west and south-east: its shores have no bold promontories nor rocky headlands, excepting in some few spots upon the windward, or north—eastern coast, which indeed is of a bolder character, as is the case with all the islands in these seas of which I have knowledge; perhaps too the shore is more abrupt at the opposite extremity of the island, the line of hills, which may be said in a general way to pass through the middle of the island, terminating here also in rocks of moderate height.

I understand that Barbadoes is similar in appearance and in structure to a few of the other islands in this Archipelago; to wit, that half of Guadaloupe which is called Grande-Terre, and which indeed forms a separate island from Basse-Terre, the two divisions having a channel, occasionally, if not always, filled. Marigalante, Antigua, and Santa Cruz also have a common structure with Barbadoes; they all agree in being of moderate elevation, have no volcanic traces, and are all formed of limestone rock; of this however I have no personal knowledge. Barbadoes is in great part composed of fossil madrepores, and traces of organic structure are to be met with in almost every part of the island. These remains are particularly discoverable along the whole of the south and south-west or leeward coast, and here I think the rocks assume a form which, although it obtains more or less in every part of the island, is here most discernible. The land, which when seen from the sea appears to rise uniformly from the coast, is observed on a nearer view to consist of successive terraces rising in two or three gradations one above the other; each terrace forming a plain of a quarter or half a