This slope became steeper as we advanced and very dangerous, but it was impossible to retrace our steps. When we attempted to ascend, the mountain slid away under our feet, crumbling into ashes. It was like climbing a treadmill. So we had to abandon this hope and go still further down, lying on our backs, progressing inch by inch carefully, one of us occasionally sliding down a few yards and sending an avalanche before him. We knew not to the edge of what precipices this dreadful way would lead us. Luckily we reached the bottom and found water in safety. I determined not to get into any difficulties of this description in the course of our present journey.
We gradually ascended the ravine, sometimes climbing on one side of it, sometimes on the other, and occasionally wading through the water at the bottom, according to which route was the safest.
The nature of the scenery around us was now grand in the extreme, and had a weird character of its own that I have never perceived on other mountains. The jagged and torn peaks, the profound chasms, the huge landslips of black rocks, the slopes of red volcanic ash destitute of vegetation, in themselves produce a sense of extreme desolation; but this is heightened by the presence of a ghastly dead vegetation and by the numberless uncanny birds and land-crabs which cover all the rocks.
This lonely islet is perhaps the principal breeding place for seabirds in the South Atlantic. Here multitudes of man-of-war birds, gannets, boobies, cormorants, and petrels have their undisturbed haunts. Not knowing how dangerous he is, they treat their superior animal, man, with a shocking want of due respect. The large birds more especially attack one furiously if one approaches their nests in the breeding season, and in places where one has to clamber with hands as well as feet, and is therefore helpless, they are positively dangerous.
As for the land-crabs, which are unlike any I have seen elsewhere, they swarm all over the island in incredible numbers. I have even seen them two or three deep in shady places under the rocks; they crawl over everything, polluting every stream, devouring anything—a loathsome lot of brutes, which were of use, however, round our camp as scavengers. They have hard shells of a bright saffron colour, and their faces have a most cynical and diabolic expression. As one approaches them they stand on their hind legs and wave their pincers threateningly, while they roll their hideous goggle eyes at one in a dreadful manner. If a man is sleeping or sitting down quietly, these creatures will come up to have a bite at him, and would devour him if he was unable for some reason to shake them off; but we murdered so many in the vicinity of our camp during our stay on the island, that they certainly became less bold, and it seemed almost as if the word had been passed all over Trinidad that we were dangerous animals, to be shunned by every prudent crab. Even when we were exploring remote districts we at last found that they fled in terror, instead of menacing us with their claws.
But the great mystery of this mysterious island is the forest of dead trees which covers it and which astonishes every visitor.
The following account of this wood is taken from the Cruise of the Falcon, and as it was nine years ago, so is it now:—
“What struck us as remarkable was, that though in this cove there was no live vegetation of any kind, there were traces of an abundant extinct vegetation. The mountain slopes were thickly covered with dead wood—wood, too, that had evidently long since been dead; some of these leafless trunks were prostrate, some still stood up as they had grown. … When we afterwards discovered that over the whole of this extensive island—from the beach up to the summit of the highest mountain—at the bottom and on the slopes of every now barren ravine, on whose loose-rolling stones no vegetation could possibly take root—these dead trees were strewed as closely as it is possible for trees to grow; and when we further perceived that they all seemed to have died at one and the same time, as if plague-struck, and that no single live specimen, young or old, was to be found anywhere—our amazement was increased.
“At one time Trinidad must have been covered with one magnificent forest, presenting to passing vessels a far different appearance to that it now does, with its inhospitable and barren crags.
“The descriptions given in the Directory allude to these forests; therefore, whatever catastrophe it may have been that killed off all the vegetation of the island, it must have occurred within the memory of man.
“Looking at the rotten, broken up condition of the rock, and the nature of the soil, where there is a soil—a loose powder, not consolidated like earth, but having the appearance of fallen volcanic ash—I could not help imagining that some great eruption had brought about all this desolation; Trinidad is the acknowledged centre of a small volcanic patch that lies in this portion of the South Atlantic, therefore I think this theory a more probable one than that of a long drought, a not very likely contingency in this rather rainy region.”
Some time after the publication of the Cruise of the Falcon I came across an excellent description
