THE ISLAND OF ST. HELENA. The Island of St. Helena lies in the Atlantic ocean detached from any group, 600 miles from Ascension island, the nearest land, and situated in longitude 5 degrees 49m. west from Greenwich, and lat. 15 deg, 5 min, south. 'The island is 10 1-2 miles long by 6 3-4 broad. 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. Its aspect is still more bleak and dreary than that of Ascension; the whole exterior being forbidding, and were it not so well known, nobody would suppose it contained inhabitants; for rough and barren rocks, perpendicular precipices, shores literally iron bound, added to rocky and grassless hills, seems as if, by its formation, man had been intentionally excluded. St. Helena was discovered by Don Juan de Caleca or de Nova, a Portuguese navigator, on St. Helen's day, 1502. The English first took possession in 1600; and it has ever since remained under their authority. James' Town, the only one in the island, and called after James II., does not become visible till you arrive near the anchorage which lies directly opposite. It is situated in a valley, a deep narrow ravine, flanked by steep stony ridges, towering above it to a considerable height. That to the left when viewed from the sea, iş termed Rupert's hill; so called from the famous prince of that name having a carriage road cut along its brow. The first view of the town is not unpleasing, it is formed by one principal street of some length extending directly up the valley. The houses are small and whitewashed, they consist principally of shops and lodging houses; it also contains a church, a residence for the governor, a theatre built in 1807, a tavern, barracks, and (what would be better in any other situation) a burying ground. Several batteries and posts surrounds it on all sides. St. Helena attracts attention as having been the prison of Napoleon Bonaparte from the year 1815, till his death, May 5th, 1821 PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. The miracles of the first dispensation of Christianity were called for by the stupidity of mankind. The systematic course of nature lulls the mind to sleep, and the being who is hourly conversant with wonders quite as astonishing as any miracle could be, accustomed to the frequency and regularity of their recurrence, learns to regard them as the necessary order of events-and, therefore, not surprising. On this rock Infidelity has made desolating shipwrecks. The infidel has disbelieved the bible account of miracles, simply because the laws of nature were abrogated by such occurrences, when, in fact, to the eye of the reflecting philosopher, the uniform course of nature, according, day after day as well as century after century, with known principles of being and motion, is a standing miracle, transcendantly more incomprehensible than any occasional and startling deviation. But all mankind were not philosophers and became insensible to the hourly mysteries of nature and of their own being-and their Father in heaven, for great moral purposes, ordered, from time to time, certain innovations to rouse them to a perception of a present deity. The miraculous cleaving of the Red Sea, its walls of waters on either hand of the dry passage like ramparts, and their ruinous junction, after the chosen people had passed through, afford a picture of sublimity unequalled on the canvass that heaves with the grandest scenes of time; yet no single miracle on record has been so obstinately ascribed to natural causes as this. The truth of the passage of a fugitive nation safely over this sea, and the destruction of their followers stands on a basis broader than that of the Pyramids. The site of this event has been pointed out from the day of its occurrence to the present-and, in Napoleon's expedition to the Nile in the early period of his military career, as Lockhart relates, it was near being the scene of another catastrophe that might have had an important influence on the destinies of the world. Towards evening Napoleon and his suit rode into the shallow waters of the Red Sea at the reputed spot of Pharoah's overthrow, desirous of ascertaining to what extent they were fordable to their horses. Darkness was gathering, when suddenly the tides, there extremely rapid, were upon them, and the horses found themselves beyond their depth. The point of compass was lost, the shore was not visible, and a council of war was instantly called to decide on measures for escape. Napoleon, by one of those decisions of mind so frequently useful to him in the future emergencies of his eventful life, ordered a circle to be formed and each horseman to ride from it as a radius from a centre, stopping when the depth of water prevented further progress. The next movement was for all to follow the horseman that rode on the farthest, showing the longest path of shoal water --and this was Napoleon's path from the grave of one of the Pharoahs. The story of this catastrophe of Pharoah is not destitute of deep moral instruction. The unyielding character of man, when roused up to take decisive positions, is well illustrated in the entire history of the Egyptian plagues. The nature of the greater part of these calamities was such as would scarcely permit them to be referred to natural causes. They had all been threatened as warnings to the proud king to favor the oppressed people of the Lord; these warnings were unheeded, and the judgments came. Every time the impious monarch arrayed himself against his maker, he nad failed. He had seen the prophet raise in his hand the rod which had been turned into a serpent, and smite the waters the waters turned into blood; he had seen frogs cover the land, and invade his bed chambers; he had seen the dust of the earth become a loathsome animation; he had seen the air burdened with flies; he had seen the cattle of his plains afflicted; he had seen his people affected with a disease in common with every living thing; he had seen the atmosphere gather blackness and when the appalling thunder broke in the gloom, hail mingled with fierce flames smote upon the vales of Egypt; he had seen locusts in countless inillions swarm on his coasts, and leave no green thing behind them; he had seen and felt the Stygian darkness that lay like a dreadful incubus over all his land—a blackness alike impervious to the sun's bright ray, or the glare of earthly fires; he had heard the melancholy midnight cry arise from one extremity of his realm to the other as the angel of death struck the pitiless blow on every first born-and yet, even then, he barely consents to let this people go. Ten times warned and punished, who would have thought that the plains of Egypt would have gleamed far and wide with martial array, and that vengeance should have put on its cruel trappings to sweep from the earth a long afflicted, enslaved people! The circumstances of the chosen people, the gathering wrath of their pursuers-the Red Sea, with its multitudinous waves before, and the rough waves of plumes, of spears and chariots and archers behind, and the passage through the parted billows, are well described in an unfinished poem of the late, elegant and pious Bishop Heber of India. The following is a brief extract: Friend of the poor! the poor and friendless save.— On earth's last margin throng the weeping train, Their cloudy guide moves on---and must we swim the main; He comes-their leader comes---the man of God |