We proceeded about 4 miles farther and had houses pretty plentifully on each side the river, the vally being all this way 3 or 400 yards across. We were now shewn a house which we were told would be the last we should see, the master offerd us Cocoa nutts and we refreshd ourselves. Beyond this we went maybe 6 miles (it is dificult to guess distances when roads are bad as this was, we being generaly obligd to travel along the course of the river) we passd by several hollow places under stones where they told us that people who were benighted slept. At lengh we arrivd at a place where the river was bankd on each side with steep rocks, and a caskade which fell from them made a pool so deep that the Indians said we could not go beyond it, they never did, their business lay upon the rocks on each side on the plains above which grew plenty of Vae. The avenues to these were truly dreadfull, the rocks were nearly perpendicular, one near 100 feet in hight, the face of it constantly wet and slippery with the water of numberless springs; directly up the face even of this was a road, or rather a succession of long peices of the bark of Hibiscus tiliaceus which servd them as a rope to take hold of and scramble up from ledge to ledge, tho upon those very ledges none but a goat or an Indian could have stood. One of these ropes was near 30 feet in lengh. Our guides offerd to help us up this pass but rather recomended one lower down a few hundred yards which was much less dangerous, tho we did not chuse to venture, as the sight which was to reward our hazard was nothing but a grove of Vae trees which we had often seen before.

In the whole course of this walk the rocks were almost constantly bare to the view, so that I had a most excellent opportunity of searching for any apearance of minerals but saw not the smallest. The stones every where shewd manifest signs of having been at some time or other burnd; indeed I have not seen a specimen of stone yet in the Island that has not the visible marks of fire upon it, small peices indeed of the hatchet stone may be without them but I have peices of the same species burnd almost to a pumice, the very clay upon the hills gives manifest signs of fire. Possibly the Island owes its original to a volcano which now no longer burns; or Theoreticaly speaking, for the sake of those authors who balance this globe by a proper weight of continent placed near about these latitudes, that so nesscessary continent may have been sunk by Dreadfull earthquakes and Volcanos 2 or 300 fathoms under the sea, the tops of the highest mountains only still remain[in]g above water in the shape of Islands: an undoubted proof that such a thing now exists to the great emolument of their theory, which was it not for this proof would dhave been already totaly demolishd by the Course our ship made from Cape Horn to this Island.

Voyaging Accounts