Napoleon's Young Neighbor

This book, chronicling some little known passages in the last few years of Napoleon, is based on the Recollections of Napoleon at St. Helena, by Mrs. Abell (Elizabeth Balcombe), published in 1844 by John Murray.
Her little book is written in an old-fashioned and quiet style, and the present writer, without altering any words of Napoleon's, has, so far as possible, given a vivid form to conversations and incidents related undramatically and has rearranged incidents that Mrs. Abell told without great attention to chronology. The writer has also added many pages of matter (with close reference to the best authorities) in order to make the whole story of Napoleon clear to those who are not familiar with it.
Far south in the Atlantic there is an island that at first sight from the deck of a ship seems little more than a great rock. In shape it is oblong, with perpendicular sides several hundred feet high. It is called St. Helena because the Portuguese, who discovered it in 1502, came upon it on the birthday of St. Helena, Constantine's mother. To describe it as the geographies might, we may say that it lies in latitude 15° 55' South, and in longitude 5° 46' West. It is about ten and a half miles long, six and three-quarters miles broad, and its circumference is about twenty-eight miles. The nearest land is Ascension Island, about six hundred miles away, and St. Helena is eleven hundred miles from the Cape of Good Hope.
From the sea St. Helena is gloomy and forbidding. Masses of volcanic rock, with sharp and jagged peaks, tower up above the coast, an iron girdle barring all access to the interior. A hundred years ago its sides were without foliage or verdure and its few points of landing bristled with cannon. Jamestown, the only town, named for the Duke of York, lies in a narrow valley, the bottom of a deep ravine. Precipices overhang it on every side; the one on the left, rising directly from the sea, is known as Rupert's Hill, that on the right as Ladder Hill. A steep and narrow path cuts along the former, and a really good road winds zigzag along the other to the Governor's House. Opposite the town is James's Bay, the principal anchorage, where the largest ships are perfectly safe.