“The tomb of Napoleon we visit to-day,
And trod on the spot where the tyrant lay;
That his equal again may never appear,
'Twill be sincerely prayed for many a year.”
The masters and officers of some of the whale-ships touching at St.
Helena seem to have made pilgrimages to Longwood. Mr. William Miller,
master of the barque _Hope_, of New Bedford, writes that he “visited the
remains of the greatest warrior of the day, interred for twenty years.”
Then he breaks out into these noble lines:--
“Here lies the warrior, bravest of the brave,
Visited by Miller, God the Queen may save.”
As a Britisher I shake your hand, William. When you wrote that, forty
years ago, American whaling or any other kind of skippers did not
particularly care about our nation; but you, William, were a white man.
How easily you might have said something nasty about us and made “brave”
rhyme with “grave”! But you were a real poet, and above hurting our
feelings.
Captain Miller was evidently accompanied by some of his crew, one of
whom contributes this gem of prose:--
“Louis F. Waldron, on bord the barke hope of nubedford, its boat steer,
has this day been to see honey's tomb; we are out 24 munts, with 13
hundred barils of sperm oil.”
All greasy luck attend you, honest Louis, boatsteerer, in the shades
beyond. You wielded harpoon and lance better than the pen, and couldn't
write poetry. Your informing statement about the “ile” at once recalled
to memory an inscription upon the wooden head-board of the grave of
another boat-steerer which in 1873 was to be seen at Ponapê, in the
Caroline Islands:--
“Sacred to Memory of Jno.
Hollis of sagharbour
boatsterer of ship Europa of new
Bedford who by will of
almity god died of four ribs stove in by a
off pleasant island north pacific
4.17.69.”
Sailors love the full-blooded, exhaustive mortuary poem as well as any
one, and generally like to describe in detail the particular complaint
or accident from which a shipmate died. Miners, too, like it. Many years
ago, in a small mining camp on the Kirk River, in North Queensland, I
saw the following inscription painted on the head-board of the grave of
a miner who had fallen down a shaft:--
“Remember, men, when you pass by,
What you are now, so once was I.
Straight down the Ripper No. 3 shaft I fell;
The Lord preserve my soul from hell.”
On the Palmer River diggings (also in North Queensland) one William
Baker testified to his principles of temperance in the following,
written on the back of his “miner's right,” which was nailed to a strip
of deal from a packing-case:--
“Bill Baker is my name,
A man of no faim,
But I was I of the First
In this great Land of thirst
To warn a good mate
Of the sad, dreadful fate,
That will come to him from drink.
--Wm. Baker of S. Shields, England.”
But let me give some more quotations from the Longwood visitors' book.
Three midshipmen of the _Melville_ irreverent young dogs, write:--
“We three have endeavoured, by sundry potations of Mrs. T------'s
brandy, to arrive at a proper pitch of enthusiasm always felt, or
assumed to be, by pilgrims to this tomb. It has, however, been a
complete failure, which I fear our horses will rue when we arrive at the
end of our pilgrimage.--Three Mids. of the _Melville_.”
That is another gross insult to France--an insult which, fortunately for
England, has escaped the notice of the French press. And now two more
extracts from the delicious article in the Sydney paper:--
“William Collins, master of the _Hawk_ of Glasgow, from Icaboe, bound
to Cork for orders. In hope never to have anything to do with the dung
trade! And God send us all a good passage home to old England. Amen! At
Longwood.”
I sympathise with _you_, good William! You describe the guano-carrying
industry by a somewhat rude expression; but as a seafaring man who
has had the misfortune to be engaged in the transportation of the
distressful but highly useful product, I shake your hand even as I shake
the greasy hand of Mr. William Miller, the New Bedford blubber-hunter.
My benison on you both.