■were quite prepared to stock and to colonize them whenever it
was their fortune to discover them. The former they were quite
prepared for on this occasion, hy the fact of their having with them,
and their leaving at the Island, a supply of goats, asses, and hogs,
hut it does not appear that any human being remained; nature was
left in possession to reign alone for eleven years longer, disturbed
only hy the battle which has waged ever since between the goats and
the native vegetation.
The day of its discovery being the anniversary of the birthday
of Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, the island was
called St. Helena, in honour thereof, by the Portuguese, and has
retained the same name ever since.
In the year 1513, the Portuguese, partly with a view to colonize
the place, and partly, as was their custom, to dispose of a prisoner,
returned there from India, and left as its first human inhabitant
Fernandez Lopez, a nobleman, who having incurred disgrace through
desertion, was so rewarded; previously he had been mutilated by
his nose, ears, right hand and little finger of the left hand being cut
off, and he appeared to prefer this banishment to the reproach which
he* must suffer on being taken home to Europe. He thus had the
honour of being the first Governor of St. Helena, and was provided
with a few negro slaves, pigs, goats, poultry, partridges, guinea
fowl, pheasants, peacocks, vegetables, roots, fig, orange, lemon and
peach trees. After this poor creature had spent four years in
cultivating the soil, his Eohinson Crusoe style of life came to an end
hy his removal through orders from Portugal.
The Portuguese continued to make use of the Island as a place of
call for homeward bound ships. On the 8th June, 1588, it was
visited by Captain Cavendish, who anchored his ship off Chapel
"Valley (now James’ Valley), and found there a settlement comprising
several good buildings and a Boman Catholic church. The attempts
of the Portuguese to introduce useful plants had evidently succeeded,
for fig, lemon, orange, pomegranate, shaddock and date trees were
then growing there, as well as parsley, sorrel, basil, fennel, aniseed,
mustard, and radishes; he moreover found partridges, pheasants,
guinea cocks or turkeys, with a large number of goats and wild
pigs. Captain Cavendish had a good opportunity of investigating
the place on this occasion, as it appears that he escaped
meeting there the Portuguese homeward bound fleet by twenty
days, it having sailed just that time before his arrival. He does not
seem to have molested the St. Helenians, for he took his departure
after twelve days ; and the next visit of the English appears to have
been in the year 1591, when Captain Kendall, commanding one of
three ships which undertook the first trading voyage to India, and
having only reached the Cape of Good Hope, was obliged to return,
and called at the Island. One of the ships, commanded by Captain
Lancaster, succeeded in reaching India, and on its return he visited
St. Helena on the 3rd April, 1593, remaining there nineteen days.
The place does not then appear, notwithstanding the flourishing
condition in which it was found by Captain Cavendish only five
years before, to have been a very desirable residence, for it is recorded
that Captain Lancaster found there one of the crew of Captain
Kendall’s ship, who was so overjoyed at once more beholding the
faces of his countrymen, and the prospect of revisiting his native
country, that for eight days he took no rest and died for want of
sleep.
Probably the next visit of the English was when Captain
Lancaster again arrived there, on the 16th June, 1603, on his return
a second time from India, with two out of a fleet of four ships, that
had left England, in the interest of the East India Company. I t
became, about this time—little more than a century after its discovery—
a resort of Dutch and Spanish ships, as well as English; and
Portuguese authority seems to have lessened, through that power
being interested in acquiring possessions elsewhere, and the Island
was for awhile deserted, though still used by the captains and crews of
ships as a South Atlantic Post Office. It was customary to place
letters under huge boulders of stone, marked in a conspicuous
manner, so that the crews of ships returning from India might
obtain news from home. An interesting record of this period is still
to be seen on a rude block of lava, measuring nearly five feet high,
and two feet six inches wide, which has been preserved by being subsequently
built into a large mass of masonry or mausoleum, in the Jamestown
lower burial ground, erected “ In Honour of the Memory of
Mistress Ann Pyke, a .d . 1716,” but hideous enough to terrify the
ghost of that good lady, should it ever indulge in midnight rambles.
The Dutch traders to the East were the next to appropriate this
deserted oceanic highway resting-place. They took possession of and
retained it until the year 1651, when, in consequence of their estab
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