The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-11-18
IN FULL FLIGHT
 FROM ST. HELENA
ISLAND ON WHICH NAPOLEON SPENT Hfs LAST DAYS.
It's POpulation---0ne of the L0neIi- esq Places on the Entire Globe British Garrison New
 About to Be With

The cable brings the news that the few people left on the Island of St. Helena are anxious tv get away from IL. This desire is not strange, because they are as lonely nowadays as the mntineers of the Bounty on their island or Robinson Crusoe on his isle in the Southern Pacific.
 l St. Helena has been colled both the water tank and the bumboat of the South Atlantic Ocean. In the old days, before the Suez Canal divided Asai from Africa and let. the steamships from Great Britain ana Europe reach the Orient by another route than around the Cape of God Hope. James town harbor sometimes had fleet Of fifty vessels riding at anchor nj the sfadow of the Barn, as the mountain af rock, overhanging 1t is called. St! Helena has a handy stopping place, not onlX to take on water, but also to get supplies of food fresh vegetables and perhaps some beer or mutton to replenish the stores. Usual | ly the captain stayed long enough in the harbor to give the men shore liber- ty at least for day, when they would spend their surplus money in pony rid ing or do stunts in climbing the 600- foot Jacobs Ladder up the face of the Barn.
 With the opening of the Suez route EItt6Ua WAS hO ton8SE NAlb WdtGi tank and bumboat for the Oriental lshlpping. Long ago 1t ceased to be a stopping place except for few tramp steamers, which stil go around the Cape of Good Hope. Only the prison ship or Government vessels enter Jamestorn Baq, with. occasionally venturesome yacht whose owner wants to make a pilgrimage. to the home of Napoleon in exile.
 For time the camps of Boer prison CTS on the sliand caused fleet of Euardships and transports to anchor off It's capital, but when peace was de- clared in South Africa and tho last hatch of prisoners were returned to the continent. about all the inhabitants of St. Helena had to trade upon was the British garrison. Now even this Is 10 be withdrawn, and the people have actually no way of getting money ex- |ccpting to circulate what little there Is upon the island among themselves.
 Thanks to the climate and the fertili- ty of the soil that can he cultivated. they are in no danger of food famine, hut money is so scarce that according to a. recent report of the United States Consul stationed on the. island the ma jority of them have not enough to pay their passage to Africa on the occa- sional vessel which calls at Jomestown
 The fact is that St. Helena has be- come a land of nowhere. Nature ap- parently' never intended 1t as a human habitation, for about the only thing that Is original on the island, except a few plants, is the landscape.
 This is certainly wild enough and ugly enough to be original When the eruption of the volcano threw the is- land up from the sea it not only creat- ed the Barn, but jagged the surface with hills and furrowed it with val .f rnt1,f innlls sand feet deep.
 Most of these are barc rock, because the rains continually wash into the sea the little earth from the hillside above. Consequently, the little territory suit able for grazing sheep and cattle, grokines grain and fruit is principally on the tabelands and the more gently aloping hilIsides. but you can sail en- tirely around the thirty miles of coast line and not see tree or even patch of vegetatlon--nothing but walls of the black basaltic rock of which the island is composed
 Go back through Ruperts valley, however, and you will find clumps or banana trees. little thIckets of ham boo, while the place where Napoleon was buried before his body was taken from St. Helena to Europe is bordered with a little grove of willows. Tdcre is a story about the willows which is worth telling
 Every store fin Jamestown has an as- sortment of such things as napkins rings. paper cutters and card cases which the tradesmen solemnly say were made from the wood of these wil- lows which hang over the resting place of the Emperor They are stained and polished to deftly that they might be easily taken for any other wood.
 As mattre of fact the hull of many a captured slave vessel lowed into the Jamestown harbOT in former days has contributed to these stores of relics and far more are made If oak and teak tha nwer ever fashioned out of willow. One of the main sources of income to the islanders in the bumboat years was from the sale of these souvenirs to the, crews of the vessels in port.
 Just to show how St. Helena has been made No order for human occupation, the naturalist has found that out of 800 different kinds of plants, less than fifty are actually native. The bamboo trees originally came rom India. They grow good yams in StHelena, but tue ancestors of these came from the is- land of Madagascar.
 The grass which forms the pastur- age for the little herds of sheep and cattle sprang from seed brought from Cape Colony. The officers of the gari- son kill time by shooting cartridges, but the first birds were originally from Asia.
 St Helena is pestered by a sort Of sparrow. pair from JaYa came to- the island on a sailing sig and flew ashore From them have been bred swarms of birds which eat so much grain that they have become a nui- sance.
 The few miles which draw the blow and culitvator came all the way from South America, while England and Cape Colony supplied the sheep and cattle One naturalist has been bold enough to assert that mice are natives of st. Helena, but his theory has been contradicted by others.
 Tt Is truly laud of contrasts. Walking along a hillside you can pluck the gor8e jdst as it grows In Great Britain. Go a mile further and you can pick bananas and pomegranates, as well as dainties Of the tropics
 With in a mile Of the 0iire groves