’» !'S
!;;î î i!:
M I
as elsGAvliere tliero is a great increase of community
of feeling and Imman sympathy throughout the
diiferent grades of tho service. This depends, doubtless,
greatly upon the personal equation of the
commandant ; h u t not entirely so ; the old oppressive
system under which Ascension, in common Avith
many other ships, suffered some years ago could
scarcely exist under present conditions. N oav apparently
little is felt of unpleasant restriction, although
the island is under military laAv, and everything is
done in order and at the sound of the hugle. Rations
are served out of food and Avater to every family, so
much a head, the amount varying Avith the supply.
As the island is in no sense self-supporting, nearly
everything being imported, provisions are only supplied
to merchant-ships in case of necessity, and at
almost prohibitory rates. At noon, instead of the
toAvn-clock lao’O’ino; ont its tAvelve O O O strokes, the Avorkmen
disperse to their mid-day spell to the sharp
familiar sound of ‘ eight hells.’
The day hefore Ave arrived had heen most exceptional
in the experience of the station. Heavy rain
had fallen, as it only knows in the tropics Iioav to
fall, for some hours continuously, too rapidly to ho
ahsorhed hy the porous ashes, Avhich soon suck np
any ordinary tropical shoAver ; and the water had
rushed doAvn the valley aud SAvept through the
settlement, committing great havoc among their
neatly paved streets and squares. The torrent had
rushed far out to sea red Avith ashes, and had
carried AA'ith it quantities of cinders and lumps of
pumice, some of AA'hich Avere still floating ahout on
the surface.
Haring our stay Ave had a pleasant excursion up
to ‘ Green Mountain,’ Avhere aa g stayed a day or two
AA'ith Captain East. The road from the settlement is
very good, AA'inding np a gentle slope for the greater
p a rt of the Avay among the lava ridges. The Avliole
of the lower p art of the island is absolutely barren—
a Avaste of stones with here and there a gnarled
cactus-stump and a feAV solanaceons and portalaceous
Aveeds, Avhich afford scanty food to the guinea-fowl,
Avliich, at first introduced from the Cape Verde
islands, have become rather numerous in the rocky
valleys, and afford a good deal of very exciting, if
rather hreak-neck sport. The most useful Avild
plant is the Cape gooseberry (a species of Bhysalis),
AA'hich is very common, and yields an ahundance of
pleasant suh-acid berries. Vinca rosea has spread
all ahout in its Avhite and lilac varieties, and a tu ft
of its shoAvy floAvers is ahout the only relief to the
general sterility. In a genial tropical climate, prevented
from becoming insupportahly hot and dry hy
the moisture-laden trade, and Avith a soil rich from
the decomposition of volcanic minerals, it is Avonder-
ful AA'liat a tendency to vegetation there is. The heds
are so porous th a t the nnfrequent rain dries off at
once; h u t even the slightest shoAver brings into
transient blossom and beauty some little parched-up
mummy of a plant in every creA'iee. I f they could
only irrigate hit hy bit for a feAV years, till enough of
vegetable soil had heen accumulated to make the
surface a little more compact and retentive, I am
sure this Avilderness Avould soon blossom like the
rose. Natural causes aa'111 carry this out in time, t! X
and no doubt some of Captain East’s remote