Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/549

 Munden, and presented to the East India Company by Charles II.; and it was given up by the Hon. Company to the English Government for the residence of the Emperor Buonaparte. Length of the island, ten miles and a half; breadth, six and three-quarters; circumference at the water's edge, thirty miles; twelve hundred miles west of Africa, and eighteen hundred east of America. Whales are found off the island. It contains four thousand inhabitants, and thirty thousand acres of arable and pasture land. The air is salubrious, the valleys are fruitful, and flocks of wild goats browze on the hills.

The island rises a mass of rocks from the sea; the only two points for landing are at St. James's Town, the capital, and at Sandy Bay. When St. Helena lay five miles S.W. the view presented was particularly good: you could see George's Island, as well as Hercules Island, the flag—staff, Barn Point, the Sugar-loaf Hill, and the plantation at Longwood. The pointed summits of the rocks in the distance, whose peaks turn from each other, are very remarkable.

There is another good view of the island when in front of Barn Cliff, so called from its fancied resemblance to a great barn. Sugar-loaf Hill derives its name from its conical shape. I was told that Sandy Bay was well worth visiting, its scenery being beautiful,—which I can well imagine, from the wild form of the rocks around it, when viewed from a distance.

Opening St. Helena Bay, at the base of the Sugar-loaf, are three batteries, called Buttermilk and Bank's Upper and Lower Batteries, at a small distance from each other. We came to anchor off James's Town, near the high perpendicular rock of Ladder Hill, surmounted by its battery and telegraph, above which, in the distance, High Knoll is to be seen. Diana's Peak, the highest point in the island, is two thousand six hundred and ninety-two feet high; High Peak, or High Knoll, a conical hill, south-west, is about fifty feet less elevated than the former. The rock rises eight hundred feet perpendicular from the sea, with a heavy battery of guns upon it, that command the south-west entrance to the valley and anchorage. James's Valley is also protected by a high wall and strong line of cannon close to