We took up our quarters in the huts for the night, and the next
morning divided ourselves into three parties, to explore the island. I
have before observed that we had muskets, but no powder, and therefore
stood little chance of killing any of the goats or wild hogs, with
which we found the island abounded. One party sought the means of
attaining the highest summit of the island; another went along the
shore to the westward; while myself and two others went to the
eastward. We crossed several ravines, with much difficulty, until we
reached a long valley, which seemed to intersect the island.
Here a wonderful and most melancholy phenomenon arrested our
attention. Thousands and thousands of trees covered the valley, each
of them about thirty feet high; but every tree was dead, and extended
its leafless boughs to another--a forest of desolation, as if nature
had at some particular moment ceased to vegetate! There was no
underwood or grass. On the lowest of the dead boughs, the gannets, and
other sea birds, had built their nests in numbers unaccountable. Their
tameness, as Cooper says, "was shocking to me." So unaccustomed did
they seem to man, that the mothers, brooding over their young, only
opened their beaks, in a menacing attitude at us, as we passed by
them.
How to account satisfactorily for the simultaneous destruction of this
vast forest of trees, was very difficult; there was no want of rich
earth for nourishment of the roots.
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