made so by this custom of the natives: but I hardly think such can be the case. It is to be taken into consideration, that potatoes have not been grown in the island for more than fifty years; and the natives must have been both very much more numerous and industrious, to have cleared such a quantity of land in so short a time. Although I do not think the growth of potatoes sufficient to account for the absence of forest over a great part of the country—perhaps more than half—yet it is certain the wood has decreased, from some cause or other, within no great distance of time; as I constantly found logs and roots lying in the wet ground of the barren moors, where they could not have been brought by any natural causes; and they were too distant from any place where they grow at present, as well as too useless, to have been conveyed there. The natives now yearly destroy large quantities of land, by their wasteful system of agriculture, and in time there will be no timber-land left: but this cause has not been long in operation, and is inadequate to the visible effects on the face of the country.
Wood is excessively scarce near Towpo, except in places inaccessible, and land fit for the cultivation of potatoes equally so. In a very few years, all the wood which now clothes the sides of the ravines and bases of the cliffs will be gone, and great part of the beauty destroyed in consequence; even now you see potatoes planted where it is necessary to climb. In fact, on the shores of Towpo, every bit of soil which a man can reach, even at the risk of his neck, is beginning to be planted with potatoes, as they have worn out all the level lands near. Were they to take half the care in the cultivation of the potatoe they do in that of the Kormera or sweet potatoe, they might grow it in hundreds of places which are now only covered with fern, and are in progress towards becoming barren; owing
