Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1907-01-15
ABANDONMENT OF ST. HELENA.
Island of Napoleon's Imprisonment Be
ina Deserted by Inhabitants.

II. This desire is not strange, because
they are as lonely nowadays as the
mutineers of the Bounty on their is
land. or Robinson Crusoe on his isle
in the Southern Pacific.
ST. Helena has been called both the
water tank and the bumboat OF the
South Atlantic ocean. In the old days
before the Suez canal divided Asia
and Africa and let the steamships
from Great Britain and Europe reach
the Orient by another route than
around the Cape of Good Hope
jamestown harbor sometimes had
fleet of fifty vessels riding at anchor
in the shadow of the Barn. as the
mountain Of rock overhanging it is
called.
st. Helena has q handy stopping
place not only to take on water. but
also to get supplies of food, fresh
vegetables and perhaps some beer or
mutton to replenish the stores. Usu-
ally the captain stayed long enough
in the harbor to give the men shore
liberty at least for a day, when they
would spend their surplus money in
pony riding or do stunts in climbing
the 600 foot Jacobs ladder up the
face of the barn.
With the opening of the Suez route
st. Helena was no longer the water
tank and bumboat for the Oriental
shipping. Long ago 1t ceased to be
stopping place except for few tramp
steamers, which still go around the
Cape of Good Hope. Only the prison
ship or government vessels enter
jamestown bay, with occasionally
venturesome yacht. whose owner
wants to make a pilgrimage to the
home of Napoleon in exile.
For a time the camps of Roer pris-
oners on the island caused fleet OF
guardships and transports to anchor
off its capital, but when peace was
declared in South Africa and the last
batch Of prisoners were returned to
the continent about all the inhabi-
tants of St Helena had to trade upon
was the British garrison. Now even
this Is to be withdrawn, and the peo-
pie have actually no way Of getting
money excepting to circulate what
little there is upon the island among
themselves.
Thanks to the climate and fertility
of the soil that can be cultivated, they
are In no danger of food famine,
but 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 James
town.
The fact is that St. Helena has be-
come a land of nowhere. Nature ap-
parently never intended it as a human
habitation, for about the only thing
that is original on the island, except
few plants, is t landscape.
This Is certainly wild enough and
ugly enough to be original. When the
eruption of the volcano threw the is
land from the sea it not only created
the Barn, but jagged the surface with
hills and furrowed it with valleys. some
of which are more than a thousand
feet deep.
Most of these are bare rocks, be-
cause the rains continually wash into
the sea the little earth that accumu-
lates i'm their bottoms as it crumbles
from the hillside above. Consequent
ly, the little territory suitable for
grazing sheep and cattle, growing
grain and fruit Is principally on the
tablelands and the more gently slop-
ing hillsides. but you can sail entirely
around the thirty miles of coast line
and not see a tree or patch of veg
etaton--nothing but walls of the ba-
saltic rock of which the island is COM
posed.
Go back through Rupert's valley,
however, and you will find clumps of
banana trees, little thickets of bam-
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. There
Is a story about the willows which is
worth telling.
Every store in jamestown has an
assortment of such things as napkin
rings, paper cutters and card cases,
which the tradesmen sOlemnly say
were made from the wood of these
willows which hang over the resting
place Of the emperor. They are STAIN
ed and polished so deftly that they
might be easily taken for any other
wood.
As matter of fact the hull OF
many a captured slave vessel towed
into the jamestown harbOr in former
days has contributed To these stores
of relics and far more are made of
oak and teak than We're ever fashion
ed out of willow. One of the main
sources of income to the island 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 to order for human occu-
patton, the naturalist has found that
out of 500 different kinds of plants
less than fifty are actually native. The
bamboo trees originally came from
India. They grow good yams in st.
Helena. but the ancestors Of these
came from the island 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 gar
riSon kill time by shooting partridges,
but the first birds were originally
from Asia.
st. Helena is pestered by sort Of
sparrow. A pair from Java came to
the island on a sailing ship and flew