Two of the native trees, redwood
and ebony, were good for tanning, and to save trouble the bark was
wastefully stripped from the trunks only, the remainder being left to rot;
while in 1709 a large quantity of the rapidly disappearing ebony was used
to burn lime for building fortifications! By the MSS. records quoted in Mr.
Melliss' interesting volume on St. Helena,[67] it is evident that the evil
consequences of allowing the trees to be destroyed were clearly foreseen,
as the following passages show: "We find the place called the Great Wood in
a flourishing condition, full of young trees, where the hoggs (of which
there is a great abundance) do not come to root them up. But the Great Wood
is miserably lessened and destroyed within our memories, and is not near
the circuit and length it was. But we believe it does not contain now less
than fifteen hundred acres of fine woodland and good ground, but no springs
of water but what is salt or brackish, which we take to be the reason that
that part was not inhabited when the people first {296} chose out their
settlements and made plantations; but if wells could be sunk, which the
governor says he will attempt when we have more hands, we should then think
it the most pleasant and healthiest part of the island. But as to
healthiness, we don't think it will hold so if the wood that keeps the land
warm were destroyed, for then the rains, which are violent here, would
carry away the upper soil, and it being a clay marl underneath would
produce but little; as it is, we think in case it were enclosed it might be
greatly improved" ... "When once this wood is gone the island will soon be
ruined" ... "We viewed the wood's end which joins the Honourable Company's
plantation called the Hutts, but the wood is so destroyed that the
beginning of the Great Wood is now a whole mile beyond that place, and all
the soil between being washed away, that distance is now entirely barren."
(MSS. records, 1716.) In 1709 the governor reported to the Court of
Directors of the East India Company that the timber was rapidly
disappearing, and that the goats should be destroyed for the preservation
of the ebony wood, and because the island was suffering from droughts. The
reply was, "The goats are not to be destroyed, being more valuable than
ebony." Thus, through the gross ignorance of those in power, the last
opportunity of preserving the peculiar vegetation of St. Helena, and
preventing the island from becom