Saint Helena

“ But if I can bound over the distance from Saint Helena, why should I not bound over the distance of centuries? Why should I not see the future as well as the past? Why should the one be more extraordinary, more wonderful, than the other? The only reason is, that it does not exist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What heart so strong, what eye so keen as mine—for the greater the love the sharper the eye to mark, prevent, countermine. And this maid, so cold and icy, so full of good works and the abounding fame of saintliness, let her live for the healing of the people, for the love of God and man both, and it liketh her. She shall be abbess of our greatest convent. She shall indeed be the Saint Helena of the North. Even now I will save her from death and give her refuge. I promise it. I have the power in my hands. Only do you, Hugo Gottfried, give me your love, your life, yourself! ”

“ THE scene of this little book is on a high mountain. There are, indeed, many higher; there are many of a nobler outline. It is no place of pilgrimage for the summary globe-trotter; but to one who lives upon its sides, Mount Saint Helena soon becomes a centre of interest. It is the Mont Blanc of one section of the Californian Coast Range, none of its near neighbours rising to one-half its altitude. It looks down on much green, intricate country. It feeds in the spring-time many splashing brooks. ”

“ And so that which was desired is the more bitterly hated, and revenge awakes to destroy.
"But if beauty matters little, character matters greatly. And what, by common consent, has been known in the city concerning this maid?
"I ask not you, Duke Otho, who have lived apart in your castle or in far lands, a stranger to the city like myself. But I ask the people among whom, during all these; past months of the plague, she has dwelt. Is she not known among them as Saint Helena?"
"Aye," cried the people, "Saint Helena, indeed—our savior when there was none to help! God save Saint Helena!" ”

“ Ben, you speak the truth.”
“Then we visited romantic Saint Helena. It used to be called ‘a rock in the middle of the ocean.’ How different now! A more fertile and luxuriant place there isn’t in all the wide, wide world. We called at Ascension next; well, that is a rock if you like, not a green thing except at the top o’ the hill (it has since been cultivated) . But the birds’ eggs, Nie, and the turtle. It makes me hungry to think of them even now.
“We had whole months of sport at the Cape and in South Africa, and all up the coast as far as Zambesi. ”

“ Saint Helena is a high mountainous island, lying in the south-east trade wind, and the harbour of James Town is on the leeward side of the island. Ships rounding the point to enter, and, as would seem, getting under shelter of the land, are obliged to have all ready for handing in sail, or the strong gusts and eddies coming down from the mountains would carry away some of the lighter masts, although just previously they had been exposed safely to the whole force of the unrestrained current. ”

“ And in this mass of thoughts one can not find a philosophic curiosity, not one expression of anxiety about the unknowable, not an expression of fear of the mystery which surrounds destiny. At Saint Helena, when he talks of God and of the soul, he seems to be a little fourteen-year-old school-boy. Thrown upon the world, his mind found itself fit for the world, and embraced it all. ”

“ At half an hour past four in the morning of the 15th of November, we saw land, which had the appearance of an island about eight or nine leagues long, there being no land in sight either to the northward or southward, though by the charts it should be Cape Saint Helena, which projects from the coast to a considerable distance, and forms two bays, one to the north, and the other to the south. ”

“ To the neighborhood, and also to strangers, one of its great attractions lies in its treasury of relics, the gift of Constantine's mother, Saint Helena, for many hundred years objects of pilgrimage, and even to the incredulous objects of curiosity and interest, for the robe of a yellowish brown—supposed to have been once purple—which is shown as Our Lord's seamless garment, has been pronounced by learned men to be of very high antiquity. But what possesses the Rhine tourist to moralize? ”

“ The chief resources of the people are their cattle, sheep, hogs, rabbits, and game. Some of the cattle are exported to Saint Helena, and some domestic animals let loose in Inaccessible have also greatly multiplied. Inhabitants. Tristam da Cunha has been inhabited since 1811, when the American sailor Jonathan Lambert settled here with two companions, and began to clear the ground. In 1816, the British Government fearing a secret expedition might here be organised to deliver the prisoner of Saint Helena, placed a small garrison in the island. ”

“ I should say it was a particularly healthy country for Europeans. It is both mild and uniform in its temperature, never excessively hot, and never very cold. An English August and an English January would both of them astonish the natives of Saint Helena. The trade wind gives a succession of steady and equable breezes, and tropical storms are almost unknown.”
“It is very bare and ungenial in its appearance, any way,” remarked Annchen.
“Ah, Miss Annchen, that comes of trusting to first appearances,” said Captain Ranken. “You will find it greatly improve on nearer acquaintance. ”

“ Sailing 1600 miles north-west from this island of Saint Helena you will find yourself upon the equinoctial line: from which line you will sail 3534 miles north-west by north, until you find yourself in thirty-nine degrees north latitude. And if you wish to go from these thirty-nine degrees to Lisbon you will sail 950 miles eastward, where you will find the islands of the Azores, of which there are seven, namely, Terceira, San Jorge, Pico, Fayal, Graciosa, on the east, the island of Saint Michael, and the island of Saint Mary, all are between thirty-seven and forty degrees of north latitude. ”

“ Answer.—The island of St. Helena, whose name always recalls the gloomy downfall of Napoleon I., contains an area of about forty-seven miles. It supports a population of 6,241 souls. It was discovered in 1501 by Juan de Nova Castella, a bold Portugese navigator, who gave it the name St. Helena, because he first saw it on the day sacred to that saint in the Romish calendar. In the following century the Dutch took possession and retained it until England seized it in 1673. ”

“ The whole neighbourhood of Mount Saint Helena is (182) full of sulphur and of boiling springs. The Geysers are famous; they were the great health resort of the Indians before the coming of the whites. Lake County is dotted with spas; Hot Springs and White Sulphur Springs are the names of two stations on the Napa Valley Railroad; and Calistoga itself seems to repose on a mere film above a boiling, subterranean lake. At one end of the hotel enclosure are the springs from which it takes its name, hot enough to scald a child seriously while I was there. ”

“ The shippes depart from Cochin betweene the fifteenth and last of Ianuary, going on till they haue sight of Capo de buona speranza, and the Isle of Saint Helena, which Islande is about the midway, being in sixteene degrees to the South. And it is a litle Island being fruitfull of all things which a man can imagine, with great store of fruit: and this Island is a great succour to the shipping which returne for Portugall. ”

“ Economy Saint Helena Economy - overview: The economy depends largely on financial assistance from the UK, which amounted to about $5 million in 1997 or almost one-half of annual budgetary revenues. The local population earns income from fishing, the raising of livestock, and sales of handicrafts. Because there are few jobs, 25% of the work force has left to seek employment on Ascension Island, on the Falklands, and in the UK. GDP: purchasing power parity - $18 million (1998 est.) ”

“ Book Two—Chapter Five. “Till the Sea Gives up its Dead.” From Madeira, where we stayed for many days, going on shore every forenoon to sell some of our cargo to the shopkeepers, and every afternoon for a long ride—horse and hammock—over some part or other of this island of enchantment, sometimes finishing up with a dance—from all this pleasure and delight, I say, we sailed away at last.
“South and away we sailed, and in due time we reached and anchored off Saint James’s Town, Saint Helena. ”

“ The islands are probably the most isolated and remote of all the abodes of men, lying as they do almost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and nearly equidistant from the continents of America and Africa; for, they are situated nearly on the line that could be drawn between Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope—from the latter of which they are distant some fifteen hundred miles in a westerly direction, while Saint Helena, the nearest other land to them on the north, is thirteen hundred miles away.”
“You’re very explicit, I’m sure,” said Fritz in a chaffing way ”

“ The English ministers asserted that it was so; but what enemies were they among whom he could create this uneasy feeling? Sweden, Sicily, Portugal! the notion as applied to them was absurd; it is more O’Meara. Voice from St. Helena. Vol. 2. probable that he was sincere. He said so at Saint Helena, and the peculiar circumstances of the period at which the conferences of Erfurth took place, warrant a belief in that assertion. ”

“ NA sq km Natural hazards: active volcanism on Tristan da Cunha Environment - current issues: NA Geography - note: harbors at least 40 species of plants unknown anywhere else in the world; Ascension is a breeding ground for sea turtles and sooty terns
People Saint Helena Population: 7,415 (July 2004 est.) Age structure: 0-14 years: 18.9% (male 710; female 689)
15-64 years: 71.4% (male 2,739; female 2,559)
65 years and over: 9.7% (male 319; female 399) (2004 est.) Median age: total: 34.7 years
male: 34.9 years
female: 34.5 years (2004 est.) Population growth rate: 0.62% (2004 est.) ”

“ Save for the colour of it all, in fact, St Helena reminds one more of a tremendous iceberg than an island, and not the less that it looks ready in some parts to topple over and show a new face; while the sea working round it, surging into the hollows below water-mark, and making the air groan inside of them, keeps up a noise the like of which you wouldn't wish to cruise alongside of every day. ”

“ In short the Cape of Good Hope, which tho by nature a mere desart supplys abundantly refreshments of all kinds to ships of all nations who touch there, contrasted with this Island, which tho highly favourd by nature, shews not unaptly the Genius's of the two nations in making Colonies: nor do I think I go too far in asserting that was the Cape now in the Hands of the English it would be a desart, as St Helena in the hands of the Dutch would as infallibly become a paradise. ”

“ The 10th January, 1610, we weighed and set sail homewards. The 20th about noon we passed the tropic of Capricorn; and that evening the Dutch officers came and supped with me, whom I saluted with three guns at parting. The 30th before day-light, we got sight of St Helena, having steered sixty-six leagues west in that latitude. We came to anchor a mile from shore, in twenty-two fathoms sandy ground, N.W. from the chapel. This island is about 270 or 280 leagues west from the coast of Africa. ”

“ That instant the whole wild lump of St Helena, with its ragged brim, the clear blue sky and the sea, swung round about the dwindled figures above the crag, till they were nothing but so many people together against the slope beyond.
'Twas a strange scene to witness, let me tell you; never can I forget the sightless, thinking sort of gaze from that head of his, after the telescope sank from his eye, when the Conqueror must have shot back with all her stately hamper into the floor of the Atlantic again! ”

“ We were sore beaten to and fro in these raging seas, and had many more storms than are here expressed, sometimes for a whole month together, so that our men began to fall sick, and the wind was so scant that we could fetch no port on the coast of Africa, which was the nearest land. Committing ourselves therefore into the hands of God, we made sail for the island of St Helena, knowing that we were to the westwards of the Cape of Good Hope, especially by the height we were now in to the northward. ”

“ Helena parish includes the islands of St. Helena, Ladies, Port Royal, Paris, and a few smaller islands, which, together with Hilton Head, make the district occupied by our forces. The largest and most populous of these islands is St. Helena, being fifteen miles long and six or seven broad, containing fifty plantations and three thousand negroes, and perhaps more since the evacuation of Edisto. Port Royal is two-thirds or three-quarters the size of St. Helena, Ladies half as large, and Hilton Head one-third as large. ”