298 SAINT HELENA. [1698. 



seems to me likewise desirable, that the same care were taken 

 of those Hottentot Children who are most conversant with the 

 Inhabitants of the Ga])e. 



Shall I remember the Eeader, before I leave the Cape, that 

 the Continent was discover'd by Bartliclemi Diciz, a Portu- 

 guese, in the year 1493 V- He had nndergone a prodigious 

 Tempest before he got a-shoar, whereupon he told his Master, 

 (John II) at his Eeturn, that he had nam'd this Territory the 

 Cape of Torments, to which the King reply'd, After a Storm 

 comes a Calm, therefore you ought to have call'd it the Cape 

 of Good Hope. 



After we had refresh'd our selves here for near a Month, 

 we departed the 8th of March, 1698, and sail'd directly for 

 St. Helena, an Island, as it is well known, belonging at present 

 to the English.'^ We got sight of it on Easter Day. It 

 seem'd to us extreamly high, and almost inaccessible on that 

 side that presented it self to our View.^ 



In a word it is on that side environ'd with extraordinary 

 steep Rocks even to the Sea shoar. About a quarter of a 

 League to the Southward, you discover at a distance a 

 Mountain of white Stone,* on which nothing grows ; you see 

 there an infinite number of Birds'" that I have formerly spoken 



1 Vide ante., p. 30. 



2 St. Helena had been captured by the Dutch in 1673, and retaken 

 by Sir Richard Munden in the same year. The governor of the island 

 at this time, 1698, was Captain Stephen Poirier. 



^ '' St. Helena, from its position in the South Atlantic Ocean, lies in 

 the strength of the S.E. trade wind, and is usually sighted by ships at a 

 distance of sixty miles, rising like a huge fortress, with precipitous 

 sides of 1,000 feet. These rampart-like cliffs are intersected with ravines, 

 but the island is almost inaccessible except by two or three openings to 

 leeward, at James' Town, Rupert's Valley, and Lemon Valley." 



* "The mountain of tchite stone ("pierre seche", in the original 

 French) is the curious rock called Lot, a pinnacle which rises up pro- 

 minently in the extinct crater-valley of Sandy Bay, portion of the 

 great disintegrated dike of a fine hard crystalline greystone which 

 extends four miles." ( Vitlc ISIclliss's .S7. Helena.! p. 50.) 



^ "Birds.'' In oriir. : '• ces Fous & de ces Frcgates." — Noddies and 



