might have been expected, to show to whom the vessel
belonged, and what had become of the survivors.

This studied concealment of all information led us to the most accurate
knowledge of her port of departure, her destination, and her object of
trade. Being on the south-west side of the island, with her head lying
to the north-east, she had, beyond all doubt, been running from Rio
Janeiro towards the coast of Africa, and got on shore in the night.
That she was going to fetch a cargo of slaves was equally clear, not
only from the baubles with which she was freighted, but also from the
interior fitting of the vessel, and from a number of hand and leg
shackles which we found among the wreck, and which we knew were only
used for the purposes of confining and securing the unhappy victims of
this traffic.

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
but 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 under wood or grass.
On the lowest of the dead boughs, the gannets, and other sea-birds, had
built their nests in numbers uncountable. Their tameness, as Cowper
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. The most probable cause appeared to me, a
sudden and continued eruption of sulphuric effluvia from the volcano; or
else, by some unusually heavy gale of wind or hurricane, the trees