AARON TROW

by Anthony Trollope




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
geographers 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 thither 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 wrecked here,
I consider to be more likely. The vexed 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 tempted 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