There, indeed, if you care to brave the snake-haunted place you will
discover a word, or the part of a word--"Talav----," "Torre----Vedras,"
"Vimiera," or "Badaj----," or "Fuentes de On----," and you know that
underneath lies the dust of men who served their country well when the
Iron Duke was rescuing Europe from the grip of the bloodstained
Corsican. On one, which for seventy years has faced the rising sun and
the salty breath of the ocean breeze, there remains but the one glorious
word, "Aboukir!" every indented letter thickly filled with grey moss and
lichen, though the name of he who fought there has disappeared, and
being but that of some humble seaman, is unrecorded and unknown in the
annals of his country. How strange it seems! but yet how fitting that
this one word alone should be preserved by loving Nature from the
decaying touch of Time. Perhaps the very hand of the convict mason who
held the chisel to the stone struck deeper as he carved the letters of
the name of the glorious victory.

But let us away from here; for in the hot summer months amid these
neglected and decaying memorials of the dead, creeping and crawling in
and out of the crumbling masonry of the tombs, gliding among the long,
reedy grass, or lying basking in the sun upon the fallen headstones, are
deadly black and brown snakes. They have made this old, time-forgotten
cemetery their own favourite haunting place; for the waters of the creek
are near, and on its margin they find their prey. Once, so the shaky old
wharfinger will tell you, a naval lieutenant, who had been badly wounded
in the first Maori war, died in the commandant's house. He was buried
here on the bank of the creek, and one day his young wife who had come
from England to nurse him and found him dead, sat down on his grave and
went to sleep. When she awoke, a great black snake was lying on her
knees. She died that day from the shock.