19th Jan 1832

St Jago
I took a walk with Musters. I went to the West along the coast, and then returned by a more inland path. My imagination never pictured so utterly barren a place as this is, it is not the absence of vegetation solely that produces this effect: every thing adds to the idea of solitude: nothing meets the eye but plains strewed over with black and burnt rocks rising one above the other. And yet there was a grandeur in such scenery and to me the unspeakable pleasure of walking under a tropical sun on a wild and desert island. It is quite glorious the way my collections are increasing. I am even already troubled with the vain fear that there will be nobody in England who will have the courage to examine some of the less known branches.

I have been so incessantly engaged with objects full of new and vivid interest: that the three days appear of an indefinite length. I look back to the 16th as a period long gone by.