On two days the thermometer within the tent stood for some hours at 93 degrees; but in the open air, in the wind and sun, at only 85 degrees.

The sand was extremely hot; the thermometer placed in some of a brown colour immediately rose to 137 degrees, and how much above that it would have risen I do not know for it was not graduated any higher.

The black sand felt much hotter, so that even in thick boots it was quite disagreeable to walk over it.
The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention.

Most of the organic productions are aboriginal creations found nowhere else; there is even a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands; yet all show a marked relationship with those of America, though separated from that continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in width.

The archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general character of its indigenous productions.