He who would see the prison place of the great Emperor for himself must be rich in time and patience, for the vessels that earn their government subsidy by grudgingly dropping anchor for a few hours in Jamestown's open roadstead are only indifferently good and very far between. Scarcely larger than the island of Nantucket—or Staten Island, if that conveys more meaning; almost midway between the fever-haunted coasts of Angola and Brazil; sixteen days' steam from Southampton Water and seven from Table Bay; its rockbound coasts as precipitous and forbidding as the walls of the Grand Canyon; and with a population less than that of many of New York's down-town office buildings, Saint Helena possesses one attraction, nevertheless, which more than repaid me for the long and arduous journey. That attraction is a mean and lonely cottage, set on a bleak and barren hill. To stand within the walls of that wretched dwelling and to stare out across the wastes of ocean from that wind-swept hilltop, I travelled twenty thousand miles, for on that distant stage was played the last act of the mightiest tragedy of modern times. Loitering up and down the seven seas, I have seen many islands, but none, that I can recall, that turns toward the seafarer a face at once so gloomy and so forbidding. It needs no vivid imagination, no knowledge of its history, to transform the perpendicular cliffs of Saint Helena into the grim walls of a sea-surrounded prison. It is a place so stern, so solemn, and so awesome that it makes you shiver in spite of yourself. As I leaned over the rail of a Castle steamer, with sunrise still an hour away and the Cross flaming overhead, and watched the island's threatening profile loom up out of the night, I shuddered in sympathy with that stern, cold man who came as a prisoner to these same shores close on a century ago. From the view-points of safety and severity, the captors of the fallen Emperor could not have chosen better. For the safe-keeping of a man whose ambitions had decimated, bankrupted, and exhausted the people of a continent, it was imperative that a prison should be found whence escape or rescue would be out of the question by reason of its very isolation and remoteness. Twelve hundred miles from the nearest continental land, and that a savage and fever-infested wilderness; with but a single harbour, and that so poor that landing there is perilous except in the very best of weather; its great natural strength increased by impregnable forts; its towering rocks commanding a sea view of sixty miles in every direction, thus obviating the possibility of a surprise attack, Saint Helena admirably fulfilled the requirements for a prison demanded by a harassed, weakened, and frightened Europe.