Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/130

 100 WEST AFEICA. soldiers obtained leave to remain, and since then the colony has been maintained, at times increased by a few shipwrecked sailors, at times diminished by emigration of young men, or of whole families, eager to escape from their narrow ocean home. In 1865, during the war of Secession, an American corsair landed forty prisoners on the island without providing for 'their support. On other occasions the crews of passing ships have forcibly obtained supplies from the little colony of settlers, who have nobly avenged themselves by hastening to the succour of vessels often stranded on their rocky shores. If left to itself, this little insular community might perhaps be able to subsist and develop, thanks to the uniform excellence of the climate. The families are said never to lose their children young, so that the natural increase by the excess of births over deaths is considerable. The natives, issue of Europeans, Americans, and Hollanders from the Cape, married to half-caste women from Saint Helena and South Africa, are a fine race, remarkable for the grace and harmony of their proportions. In 1886 they numbered a hundred and twelve souls ; but fifteen adults, or one-fourth of all the able-bodied members of the community, were soon after swept away by a terrible storm. English is the language of these islanders, who constitute a small republic, whose " president " is the patriarch encircled by the largest family group. They recognise the sovereignty of Great Britain, which occasionally affords some help to the vassal colony. Saint Helena. Although situated fully within the tropics, between 15*^ and 16^^ south latitude, and 1,400 miles nearer to the equator than Tristam da Cunha, St. Helena was discovered only four years earlier, that is, in 1502, by the Galician Juan de Nova, who here lost one of his vessels. The island may, however, have been sighted by some previous navigators, for some lands are figured in these waters on Juan de la Cosa's map, which was completed in 1500. Lying within the zone of the regular south-east trade winds, St. Helena occupies a very favourable position on the highway of ships homeward bound from the Indian Ocean. But the nearest continental land is the Portuguese province of Mossamedes, South- West Africa, distant 1,140 miles due west. Although still nearly double the size of Tristam da Cunha, with a total area of about 30,000 acres, St. Helena is little more than the nucleus of what it must once have been. The present cliffs, in many places rising 2,000 feet sheer above the water, are encircled by a sort of bank or terrace with a mean breadth of two or three miles and flooded to a depth of from 300 to 600 feet and upwards. This sub- merged land, which rises abruptly from the marine abysses, forms the pedestal of the old volcanic mass, of which a mere fragment now survives. And when it covered a wider extent, the island also rose vertically to a greater height. But while the waves were incessantly attacking its foundations, its uplands w^ere exposed to the ravages of rains and running waters. This twofold work of erosion,