HELENA HELIGOLAND. 



671 



oiif of Priam's sons ; and, when Troy was taken, she 

 made no scruple to betray him, and to introduce the 

 Greeks into his chamber, to ingratiate herself with 

 Menelaus. She returned to Sparta, and Menelaus 

 received her again. Some writers, however, say 

 that she obtained even her life with difficulty from 

 her husband. After she had lived for some years at 

 Sparta, Menelaus died, and she was driven from 

 Peloponnesus by Megapenthes and Nicostratus, the 

 illegitimate sons of her husband ; she retired to 

 Rhodes, where, at that time, Polyxo, a native of 

 Argos, reigned over tile country. Polyxo, whose 

 husband, Tlepolemus, had been killed in the Trojan 

 war, meditated revenge on Helen. While Helen, 

 one day, retired to bathe in the river, Polyxo dis- 

 guised her attendants in the habit of furies, and sent 

 them with orders to murder her enemy. Helen was 

 tied to a tree and strangled, and her misfortunes 

 were afterwards remembered, and the crimes of 

 Polyxo expiated by the temple which the Rhodians 

 raised to Helen Dendritis, or tied to a tree. There 

 is a tradition mentioned by Herodotus, which says 

 that Paris was driven, as he returned from Sparta, 

 upon the coast of Egypt, where Proteus, king of the 

 country, expelled him from his dominions for his 

 ingratitude to Menelaus, and confined Helen. Priam 

 therefore informed the Grecian ambassadors, that 

 neither Helen nor her possessions were in Troy, but 

 in the hands of the king of Egypt. In spite of this 

 assertion, the Greeks besieged the town, and took it 

 after ten years' siege ; and Menelaus, visiting Egypt 

 as he returned home, recovered Helen at the court 

 of Proteus, and was convinced that the Trojan war 

 had been undertaken upon unjust grounds. Helen 

 was honoured, after death, as a goddess, and the 

 Spartans built her a temple at Therapne, which had 

 the power of giving beauty to all the deformed 

 women that entered it. Helen, according to some, 

 was carried into the island of Leuce, after death, 

 where she married Achilles, who had been once one 

 of her warmest admirers. 



HELENA, ST. ; an island in the Atlantic ocean, 

 standing entirely detached from any group, and about 

 1200 miles from the nearest land, on the coast of 

 Southern Africa ; Ion. 15 55' W. ; lat. 5 49' S. 

 It was discovered by the Portuguese, in 1501. It 

 was afterwards possessed by the Dutch, and finally 

 came into the possession of the English about the 

 year 1651, in whose possession it has, with a short 

 interval, ever since remained. It was granted to the 

 East India company by Charles II. St Helena is 

 10 miles long by 6f broad, and about 28 miles in 

 circumference. It presents to the sea, throughout 

 its whole circuit, nothing but an immense wall of 

 perpendicular rock, from 600 to 1200 feet high, like 

 a castle in the midst of the ocean. On entering, how- 

 ever, and ascending by one of the few openings 

 which nature has left, verdant valleys are found 

 interspersed with the dreary rocks. There are only 

 four openings in the great wall of rock which sur- 

 rounds St Helena, by which it can be approached 

 with any facility. These are all strongly fortified. 

 The climate of St Helena is not liable to the 

 extremes of heat or cold ; but it is moist, and liable 

 to strong gusts of wind. There is only one place in 

 the island which can be called a town, situated in a 

 narrow valley, between lofty mountains, called 

 James's Valley. The principal plain in the island, 

 called Longwood, situated in the eastern part, has 

 become celebrated by the residence of Napoleon. 

 The illustrious captive arrived at St Helena in Nov- 

 ember, 1815, and died there May 5, 1821. His 

 tomb is in a secluded recess, near Longwood. It is 

 surrounded by a fence, enclosing a piece of ground 

 containing weeping willows, and by an interior iron 



fence. The tombstone is about nine inches high, 

 without an inscription. The body is deposited in a 

 mahogany coffin, which is placed within three other 

 cases : on the external one is the inscription, General 

 of the French. By his side lies the sword which he 

 wore at Austerlitz. 



HELEN US ; son of Priam, and twin-brother of 

 Cassandra, endowed with the gift of prophecy. After 

 the death of Paris, he wished to marry Helen ; and, 

 irritated by the failure of his suit, he betrayed Troy 

 into the hands of its enemy. The invention of the 

 wooden horse is ascribed to him. After the destruc- 

 tion of Troy, he fell into the hands of Pyrrhus, son of 

 Achilles, who gave him Andromache, his brother 

 Hector's widow, in marriage. He was the only one 

 of Priam's sons who survived the ruin of his country. 

 After the death of Pyrrhus, he reigned over a part 

 of Epirus. He received /Eneas on his voyage to 

 Italy. 



HELIACAL, as applied to the rising of a star, 

 planet, &c. , denotes its emerging out of the sun's 

 rays, in which it was before hid. When applied to 

 the setting of a star, it denotes the entering or immerg- 

 ing into the sun's rays, and thus becoming lost in the 

 lustre of his beams. A star rises heliacally when, 

 after it has been in conjunction with the sun, and on 

 that account invisible, it gets at such a distance from 

 the sun as to be seen in the morning before the rising 

 of that luminary. 



HELIADES ; 



1 . The seven sons of Helios (Sol) , the god of the 

 sun, who were born when the warm beams of Helios 

 dried up all the moisture of the island of Rhodes. 

 Their only sister, Electrione, died a virgin, and 

 received divine honours from the Rhodians. The 

 brothers distinguished themselves by their knowledge 

 of the sciences, particularly of astronomy; they 

 improved ship-building, and divided the day into 

 hours. Thenages excelled all his brothers in intel- 

 lect ; on which account they put him to death. When 

 the act became known, they all fled from the island, 

 except two, whose hands were not stained with the 

 blood of Thenages. 



2. The daughters of Helios and the nymph 

 Merope or Clymene were also called Heliades. See 

 Phaeton. 



HELIANTHUS. See Sun-flower. 



HELICON (now Sagara] ; a celebrated mountain 

 in the western part of Boeotia, where the Greeks 

 placed the residence of the muses, who, together with 

 Apollo, had temples and statues here. In this moun- 

 tain, also, were the fountains of the muses Aganippe 

 and Hippocrene, and the fountain in which the 

 unhappy Narcissus saw his own image. The region 

 around was extremely fertile, and so healthy that 

 even the serpents were fabled to be harmless. See 

 Parnassus. 



HELIGOLAND, or HEILGOLAND (anciently 

 Hertha) ; an island in the North sea, about nine 

 miles in circumference, on the coast of Holstein, 

 about twenty-eight miles from the mouths of the 

 Weser, Elbe, and Eyder ; formerly belonging to 

 Denmark, now to Great Britain. It is divided into 

 Kit/and Duhnen, or high and low land. It produ- 

 ces barley and oats, but not enough for the consump- 

 tion of the inhabitants, who chiefly subsist by fishing. 

 On the highest part of the west Klif, in Ion. 7 53> 

 13" E., and lat. 54 11' 34" N., is a light-house, 

 which is of great use in guiding ships amidst the sur- 

 rounding rocks and shoals, and also as a mark for 

 directing vessels to the mouths of the nearest rivers. 

 Population, 2200, subsisting chiefly by fishing and 

 acting as pilots. It was taken, in 1807, by admiral 

 Russell, from the Danes, and since the peace of Kiel, 

 has belonged to Britain, which exacts no taxes from 



