Page:Transactions of the Geological Society, 1st series, vol. 3.djvu/248

 here intersected by deep fissures, called gullies, which have rent asunder the cliffs, and are continued across the terraces in irregular lines.

These rents in the rocks are sometimes of great depth but of little breadth, and, generally speaking, are very precipitous in their sides, so as to be quite impassable, excepting here and there. Their perpendicular sides exhibit the structure of the coralloidal rocks to a considerable depth. Their bottoms are the beds of rapid torrents in the rainy season, and almost the only places where any native wood is now to be met with.

This scantiness of wood, together with the little elevation of the island in any part, renders Barbadoes very liable to drought, much more so than any of its neighbouring islands, and the inhabitants already speculate upon the necessity of replanting with a view to increase the fall of rain; but they will not find it an easy matter to effect a growth of wood upon their arid rocks. Even in the island of St. Vincent, where the quantity of rain is so much greater, failure perpetually follows the attempt; probably because we are ignorant of the successive means that have been required to produce the luxuriant vegetation which, under natural operations, springs from rocks almost bare of mould; and because too, we attempt to produce in a few years effects which have required ages to accomplish.

Upon the northern and north-eastern side of the island is a district several miles in length, varying in breadth from half a mile to two or three miles, which differs wholly from the rest of the island in its general features. It is in fact a mountainous country in miniature, and indeed that part of it which has most of this character is called Scotland.

I never had an opportunity of exploring it minutely, but, as far as I could judge, the rocks are almost wholly calcareous, though