We struck into the bush,
and bent towards the south-west of the islet, where stands the
monarch of cliffs, 80 feet high. The maximum length is three
miles by about the same breadth, and the circumference, including
the indentations, may be fifteen. The surface is rolling composed
of humus and clay, corallines and shelly conglomerates based on
tertiary limestone and perhaps sandstone; dwarf clearings
alternate with tracts of bush grass, and with a bushy second
growth, lacking large trees. The only important wild productions
pointed out to us were cardamoms, the oil palm (Elais
Guincensis), and an unknown species of butter-nut. The centre of
the island was a mass of perennial pools, fed, they say, by
springs as well as rains, one puddle, adorned with water lilies
and full of dwarf leeches which relish man's life, extended about
a hundred yards long. In fact, the general semblance of Corisco
was that of a filled up "atoll," a circular reef still growing to
a habitable land. Here only could I find on the west coast of
Africa a trace of the features which distinguished the Gorilla
island of 2,300 years ago.
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