Joseph Skey

“ The following peculiarities are observable in the district; the country is much more broken into hill and valley than any other part of the island, it has few or no gullies, is watered by some scanty streams, and has no traces of those successive stages which give so peculiar a character to the opposite side of the island. Its land boundary is in some places a very lofty cliff, and in every part a ridge of pretty considerable elevation, having a precipitous descent towards the north. ”

“ I would beg permission to state that Barbadoes, which furnished the specimens under notice, is an island totally unlike those immediately near it, both in appearance and in structure, as will be evident, when I lay before the Society specimens of the rocks of St. Vincent and St. Lucie in my possession.
The land is seen to rise in a gentle swell from the coast towards the middle of the island, excepting in a small district hereafter to be noticed ”

“ Their perpendicular sides exhibit the structure of the coralloidal rocks to a considerable depth. Their bottoms are the beds of rapid torrents in the rainy season, and almost the only places where any native wood is now to be met with.
This scantiness of wood, together with the little elevation of the island in any part, renders Barbadoes very liable to drought, much more so than any of its neighbouring islands, and the inhabitants already speculate upon the necessity of replanting with a view to increase the fall of rain ”

“ Peter's, the rock is more distinctly coralloidal: it contains also some natural caverns, from which very perfect organic remains may be procured.
In sinking a well at the Naval Hospital, a little to the north-east of St. Ann's, the following specimens were met with in the order in which they are enumerated, exhibiting in a striking manner the increasing compactness of the rock, in proportion to the pressure of the incumbent mass. ”