d was the most barren spot on the
island, always deluged with rain or swathed in mist; that O'Meara was
not to count as a British officer when they went beyond the limits,
and had been reprimanded by the Admiral for thus acting; and that the
treatment of the exiles would excite the indignation of all times and
all people. To this the Admiral sent a crushing rejoinder, declining
to explain why he had censured O'Meara or any other British subject:
he asserted that Longwood was "the most pleasant as well as the most
healthy spot of this most healthful island," expressed the hope that,
when the rains had ceased, the party would change their opinion of
Longwood, and declared that the treatment of the party would "obtain
the admiration of future ages, as well as of every unprejudiced person
of the present."

We now know that the Admiral's trust in the judicial impartiality of
future ages was a piece of touching credulity, and that the next
generation, like his own, was greedily to swallow sensational slander
and to neglect the prosaic truth. But, arguing from present signs, he
might well believe that Montholon's letter was a tissue of falsehoods;
for that officer soon confessed to him that "it was written in a
moment of petulance of the General [Bonaparte] ... and that he
[Montholon] considered the party to be in point of fact vastly well
off and to have everything necessary for them, though anxious that
there should be no restrictions as to the General going unattended by
an officer wherever he pleased throughout the island."[558] On the
last point Cockburn was inflexible.

The Admiral's responsibility was now nearly at an end. On April 14th,
1816, there landed at St. Helena Sir Hudson Lowe, the new Governor,
who was to take over the powers wielded both by Cockburn and Wilks.
The new arrival, on whom the storms of calumny were thenceforth
persistently to beat, had served with distinction in many parts. Born
in 1769, within one month of Napoleon, he early entered our army, and
won his commission by service in Corsica and Elba, his linguistic and
military gifts soon raising him to the command of a corps of Corsican
exiles who after 1795 enlisted in our service. With these "Corsican
Rangers" Lowe campaigned in Egypt and finally at Capri, their devotion
to him nerving them to a gallant but unavailing defence of this islet
against a superior force of Murat's troops in 1808.[559] In 1810 Lowe
and his Corsicans captured the Isle