I would wish to declare, at the beginning of this story, that I shall never regard that cluster of islets which we call Bermuda as the Fortunate Islands of the ancients.  Do not let professional geographers¹ take me up, and say that no one has so accounted them, and that the ancients have never been supposed to have gotten themselves so far westwards.  What I mean to assert is this—that, had any ancient been carried thither² by enterprise or stress of weather, he would not have given those islands so good a name.  That the Neapolitan sailors of King Alonzo should have been wrecked³ here, I consider to be more likely.  The vexed⁴ Bermoothes is a good name for them.  There is no getting in or out of them without the greatest difficulty, and a patient, slow navigation, which is very heart-rending.  That Caliban should have lived here I can imagine; that Ariel would have been sick of the place is certain; and that Governor Prospero should have been willing to abandon his governorship, I conceive to have been only natural.  When one regards the present state of the place, one is tempted⁵ to doubt whether any of the governors have been conjurors since his days.

Bermuda, as all the world knows, is a British colony at which we maintain a convict establishment.  Most of our outlying convict establishments have been sent back upon our hands from our colonies, but here one is still maintained.  There is also in the islands a strong military fortress⁶, though not a fortress looking magnificent to the eyes of civilians⁷, as do Malta and Gibraltar.  There are also here some six thousand white people and some six thousand black people, eating, drinking, sleeping, and dying.

The convict establishment is the most notable feature of Bermuda to a stranger, but it does not seem to attract much attention from the regular inhabitants of the place.  There is no

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