every necessary of life is four times as dear as in any other part of the globe; and, not content with that, they send a regiment here, to a place where there are already four times as many inhabitants as it can furnish subsistence to,1 and where there are a superabundance of troops also. This is the way,' continued he, that you have contracted your national debt; not by the actual necessary expenses of the war, but by unnecessary expenses of colonies. This island costs, or will cost, two millions a year, which is so much money thrown into the sea. Your East India Company,' said he, if their affairs were narrowly scrutinized, would be found to lose instead of gaining, and in a few years must become bankrupt. Your manufactories, in consequence of the dearness of neces saries in England will be undersold by those of France and Germany, and the manufacturers will be ruined.' He is greatly displeased with the island: he says there is nothing good in it but air.”2 1 Upon this passage Sir Hudson Lowe has observed, "There is truth in this remark, yet the Governor is constantly abused both as to the quality and quantity of the provisions, as if he could have always had access to a regularly supplied European market. The difficulties in this respect are little understood in Europe." 2 "It is here admitted that the air was good, and where the air is good the climate can not be bad."-Note by Sir Hudson Lowe. Referring to this passage Sir Hudson Lowe observes-"On this, and indeed on all other specified subjects of complaint, I may quote a suppressed passage from the Journal of Count Las Cases, which told too much to be published-'Les détails de Ste. Hélène sont peu de chose; c'EST D'Y ETRA qui est la grande affaire."" Count Las Cases tells us in his Journal that Bonaparte remarked to him on the 1st of February, 1816, "After all, as a place of exile, perhaps St. Helena was the best. (Après tout, exil pour exil, Ste. Hélène était peut-être la meilleure place.) In high latitudes we should have suffered greatly from cold, and in any other island of the tropics we should have expired miserably under the scorching rays of the sun. This rock is wild and barren, no doubt; the climate is monstrous and unwholesome; but the temperature, it must be confessed, is mild (douce).” CHAPTER II. SAINT HELENA-THE BRIARS-LONGWOOD-CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR GEORGE COCKBURN WITH COUNTS MONTHOLON AND BERTRAND-O'MEARA. WHAT were the feelings of the imperial captive when he first gazed upon that lonely rock of the ocean which was henceforth to be his island prison? Although he once said of himself that he had a soul of marble,' he was not cast in the mould of the fallen Archangel, who could exclaim in all the pride of unconquerable self-reliance "What matter where, if I be still the same?" The mind of Napoleon was dependent for happiness on the accidents of external fortune. He had an organization which was sensitive in the extreme. It has been truly said that exalted genius has generally in its composition something of a feminine as distinguished from an effeminate nature, and this is perhaps the reason why it is so often susceptible of annoyances and disgusts which a coarser and rougher temperament does not feel. We have read an anecdote of Napoleon which tells us that, when once in the presence of his troops he tasted some of the soldiers' soup, he had the greatest difficulty in swallowing it because he detected a hair in the spoon. He mastered, however, although he could not wholly conceal his repugnance. The sight of St. Helena must have smitten the heart of such a man with dismay. Its appearance from the sea is gloomy and forbidding. Masses of volcanic rock, with sharp and jagged peaks, tower up round the coast and form an iron girdle which seems to bar all access to the interior. And the few points where a landing can be effected 1 Voice from St. Helena, ii. 391. were then bristling with cannon, so as to render the aspect still more formidable. The whole island bears evidence of having been formed by the tremendous agency of fire, but so gigantic are the strata of which it is composed, and so disproportioned to its size, that some have thought it the relic and wreck of a vast submerged continent. Its seared and barren sides, without foliage or verdure, present an appearance of dreary desolation. No delicious scenery, like that of Funchal in Madeira, allures the mariner to stop on his voyage, and the exigency arising from the want of water or provisions alone induces him to visit the lonely rock. But even here nature has not left herself without witness that she possesses softer charms. There are few places in the earth where we can travel from Dan to Beersheba and say with truth that all is barren. In the narrow valleys that radiate from the great basaltic ridge, which forms the back-bone of the island and wind themselves between the hills toward the coast, she has scattered loveliness with a lavish hand. Vegetation there flourishes, and the eye is gratified and refreshed with a variety of foliage and the verdure of grassy slopes. "That the outwardly wild and shapeless mass of rock which St. Helena seems upon its being approached," says an accurate observer, "should contain the alternation of hill and dale, and the delightful scenes of luxuriant and endless verdure, which in the interior every where meet the eye, has been the wonder of all who have ever beheld them." But on emerging from the ravines to those parts of the island where there is any table-land, a different kind of scenery appears. Here there is little wood, except that of the gumtree, which affords scanty shade, and on every side frown masses of dark rock, the summits of which are clothed with the cabbage-tree and a gigantic species of fern. "Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Is bathed in floods of living fire; 'Seale's "Geognosy of St. Helena." The plains in the upland, however, which exists only at Deadwood and Longwood, are by no means barren. They are covered at various depths with a shaggy lava of a brown and reddish hue, with a steel tarnish of amorphous scoriæ, parts of which soil yield corn and pasture in abundance. And the climate here is more healthy than in the valleys. The heat of the sun is tempered by a refreshing breeze, which, wafted from the southern ocean, envelops the more elevated parts of the island in a shroud of mist. With respect to the climate, Lieutenant-Colonel Jackson, in a letter to the author, gives the following account of his experience of it during several years:-" Lying within the influence of the southeast trade-wind, which is usually a strong breeze between the Cape and St. Helena, the tropical heat is moderated thereby to a delightful temperature, and perhaps there is no finer climate to be found than in certain parts of St. Helena. In the town I rarely saw the thermometer above 80°, while the general height may have been about 75°. But I write from memory, having lost my register of the temperature. Between Longwood and Jamestown there is a difference of 8°. or 10°. A fire is rarely necessary, unless perhaps as a corrective of the dampness produced by fog, to which the elevated portions of the island are occasionally liable. I believe the average duration of life at St. Helena to be much as in England." And Mr. Henry, who was stationed there as assistant-surgeon during the time of Napoleon's residence at Longwood, says:1 "For a tropical climate, only fifteen degrees from the line,2 St. Helena is certainly a healthy island, if not the most healthy of this description in the world. During one period of twelve months, we did not lose one man by disease out of five hundred of the 66th quartered at Deadwood. In 1817, 18, and 19, Fahrenheit's thermometer, kept at the hospital there, 1 Events of a Military Life, vol. ii. p. 45. 2 It would be more accurate to say sixteen degrees. St. Helena is situated 15° 55′ south latitude. ranged from fifty-five to seventy degrees, with the exception. of two calm days, when it rose to eighty. It was about twelve degrees higher in the valleys and in James Town, on an average; but from the situation of the latter, and the peculiar radiation of heat to which it was exposed, the temperature was sometimes upward of ninety. The great source of health and comparative coolness in St. Helena is the southeast tradewind, coming from an immense extent of the southern ocean, which winnows the rock, and wafts over it every morning a cloudy awning that mitigates the strong sun. This is not without concomitant humidity in the highlands for half the year, but the inconvenience is as nothing compared with the comfort, fertility, and salubrity which the clouds bestow. "Notwithstanding the assertions of Napoleon's adherents, who had an interest in painting the place in as dark colors as they could, I must maintain that, correctly speaking, we had no endemic disease in the island. Human life, certainly, did not extend to the same length as in cooler regions, though some organs appeared to be privileged there; diseases of the lungs, for instance, being very rare. It has been stated that there are no old people in the island, but this is certainly a mistake, though the proportion may appear small to an English eye. I believe it is as large as in Spain and the south of Italy; and I have seen some blacks of eighty, and whites approaching ninety. The upper parts of St. Helena, including the residence of Bonaparte, are decidedly the most healthy, and we often moved our regimental convalescents from James Town to Deadwood for cooler and better air. The clouds moved so steadily and regularly with the trade-wind, that there appeared to be no time for atmospherical accumulations of electricity, and we never had any thunder or lightning. No instance of hydrophobia in man or any inferior animal had ever been known in St. Helena." Napoleon did not land at James Town until the evening of the 17th of October, when he took up his abode for one night in the town, at the house of Mr. Porteous, which had been engaged for him by the Admiral, but the next day he |