It is said that formerly single vessels have taken away as many as seven hundred, and that the ship's company of a frigate some years since brought down in one day two hundred tortoises to the beach.
SEPTEMBER 29, 1835.
We doubled the south-west extremity of Albemarle Island, and the next day were nearly becalmed between it and Narborough Island.
Both are covered with immense deluges of black naked lava, which have flowed either over the rims of the great caldrons, like pitch over the rim of a pot in which it has been boiled, or have burst forth from smaller orifices on the flanks; in their descent they have spread over miles of the sea-coast.

On both of these islands eruptions are known to have taken place; and in Albemarle we saw a small jet of smoke curling from the summit of one of the great craters.

In the evening we anchored in Bank's Cove, in Albemarle Island.

The next morning I went out walking.

To the south of the broken tuff-crater, in which the "Beagle" was anchored, there was another beautifully symmetrical one of an elliptic form; its longer axis was a little less than a mile, and its depth about 500 feet.
At its bottom there was a shallow lake, in the middle of which a tiny crater formed an islet.