midst of which glimmered the white front of a country mansion, rose above the naked heights of the shore. This was the only gleam of fertility which enlivened the terrible sterility of the view.
Further in-shore a few gun-boats and water-boats lay at anchor. and some fishing-skiffs were pulling about. As we forged slowly along to a good anchoring ground, the American consul came off, followed by a boarding-officer, and we at once received permission to go ashore and make the most of our short stay. The consul's boat speedily conveyed us to the landing-place, at the eastern extremity of the town. Every thing had a dreary and deserted air. There were half-a-dozen men and boys, with Portuguese features and uncertain complexions, about the steps, a red-coated soldier at a sentry-box, and two or three lonely-looking individuals under the weather-beaten trees. Passing a row of mean houses built against the overhanging rock, a draw-bridge over a narrow most admitted us within the walls. A second wall and gate, a short distance further, ushered us into the public square of Jamestown. Even at its outlet, the valley is not more than a hundred and fifty yards wide, and the little town is crowded, or rather jammed, deep in its bottom, between nearly perpendicular cliffs, seven or eight hundred feet in height. At the top of the square is the church, a plain yellowish structure, with a tall, square, pointed spire, and beyond it Market street, the main thoroughfare of the little place, opens up the valley.
A carriage—almost the only one in Jamestown—was procured for Mrs. H———; my fellow-passenger, P———, provided himself with a saddle-horse, and we set out for Longwood. We had a mounted Portuguese postillion and rattled up the steep and stony main street in a style which drew upon us the eyes of all Jamestown. The road soon left the town, ascending the right side of the ravine by a very long and steep grade. Behind the town are the barracks of the soldiery and their parade-ground—all on a cramped and contracted scale; then some dreary burial-grounds, the graves in which resembled heaps of cinders; then a few private mansions, and green garden-patches, winding upward for a mile or more. The depth and narrowness of the gorge completely shut out the air; the heat was radiated powerfully from its walls of black volcanic rock, and the
