Yankee Girls in Zulu LandSheldon, Louise Vescelius
History
Yankee Girls in Zulu Land
Sheldon, Louise Vescelius
South Africa -- Description and travel
The voyage from Madeira to the Cape was simply delightful. A fortnight,
during which we had crossed the equator through the heat of the tropics,
had elapsed, when we found ourselves one morning at dawn of day
approaching the rocky and precipitous shores of the Island of Saint
Helena. It had a most rugged appearance, which was heightened by its
lonely position, the island rising almost perpendicularly on all sides,
in some places of to the height of one thousand to twelve hundred feet.
Our steamer was to remain several hours, and many of the passengers took
advantage of the delay to go ashore and see the spot made so famous as
the scene of exile of Napoleon. The entrance to the island is guarded
by natural walls of stone towering above the steamer, and looking so
stern and cruel. A feeling of desolation was on us as we walked up the
one narrow, deserted street, with its filthy, repulsive-looking
inhabitants of dusky-coloured men and women. This spot was once all
life and glitter with the pride of the British Navy, when Saint Helena
was the port for the finest of British vessels to harbour in, on their
way to India by the Cape but all that glory belongs now to history.
What a terrible sense of desolation must have filled that great man's
heart in his rock-bound prison, where escape was impossible; his jail
possessed but one gateway, and that led into the boundless ocean.
We chartered some cadaverous frameworks which some dirty little boys
assured us were horses. Getting into a clattering vehicle, we were
taken to Longwood, for six years the home of the weary exile. 'Tis a
long, low building, very prettily situated at the head of a lovely
valley in the centre of the island.
His tomb lies lower down the glen. As we stood there, we could not but
think of the other tomb in Paris, with its gilded dome, vying with the
surrounding pinnacles to reach high heaven. I remember one sunny day in
Paris entering this temple; the sun was streaming through the yellow
stained-glass windows upon the marble pillars in the rear of the
building, making them appear like columns of gold; everything seemed to
be praising the life of their great hero.
Quite different, this, his resting-place. On this misty morning at
Saint Helena, as I stood in the grand silence beside this simple tomb,
which seemed to tell the story of this weary-hearted man, I felt that no
one could doubt, after visiting this spot, that Napoleon believed in a
Higher Ruler, a Superior Being; otherwise his own hand would have cut
short his dreary existence.
This visit of a few hours' duration was sufficient to cast a gloom over
us. So, picking a few leaves from the grave, we came down to the shore
again, and the dear old ship seemed like a kind heart waiting to receive
us, and cheer away our loneliness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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