ckily to keep up our spirits,
and with laughter and frivolity to cheer each other. Most of us had
never been on a ship before, and only one of our number had ever
voyaged away from South Africa. Ours was a very cheerless prospect,
for, although we did not know our exact fate, banishment for life
loomed over us. The ship's officers were urbanity itself, and did
everything in their power for our comfort. I shall always remember
their kindness, but it would have required much more than human effort
to have made our voyage enjoyable owing to the fact that we suffered
so intensely from sea-sickness.

After a very cheerless and discomforting voyage, we dropped anchor on
the 24th of February in St. Helena Harbour. "The Rock" rose out of the
ocean, bare and rugged, and imprisonment upon it offered a gloomy
prospect. No animal was visible, and foliage was wanting, I never saw
a less attractive place than Jamestown, the port at which we landed.
The houses seemed to be tumbling over one another in a "kloof." We
were all gloomily impressed, and somebody near me said, "This will be
our living graves." I answered, "No wonder that Napoleon broke his
heart upon this God-forsaken rock." I must confess that the feeling
grew upon us that we were to be treated as ordinary criminals, since
only murderers and dangerous people are banished to such places to be
forgotten by mankind.

An English officer came to me and asked what I thought of the Island.
My feelings got the better of me, and I replied--"It seems a suitable
place for England's felons, but it is very spiteful of England to
deport here men whose only crime has been to fight for their country.
It would have been much more merciful to have killed us at once than
to make us drag out an existence in a manner so dreary."

We were soon taken ashore by boats to Jamestown, and there learned to
our great disgust that we were all to be put in quarantine for bubonic
plague, and to be isolated at Lemon Valley, a valley in which I
afterwards found that lemons were conspicuous by their absence. No
greenery was to be seen in this desolate place. While our debarkation
was proceeding one of the boats capsized, but, happily, everybody
escaped with nothing worse than a ducking.

Quarantine regulations were enforced for six days at Lemon Valley. The
accommodation was very inadequate, and our culinary utensils, though
not primitive, were very bad, the food being such as might have been
the portion