Aaron Trow | Page 4

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 strong
military fortress, though not a fortress looking magnificent to the eyes
of civilians, 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 intercourse between the prisoners
and the Bermudians. The convicts are rarely seen by them, and the
convict islands are rarely visited. As to the prisoners themselves, of
course it is not open to them--or should not be open to them--to have
intercourse with any but the prison authorities.
There have, however, been instances in which convicts have escaped
from their confinement, and made their way out among the islands.
Poor wretches! As a rule, there is but little chance for any that can so
escape. The whole length of the cluster is but twenty miles, and the
breadth is under four. The prisoners are, of course, white men, and the
lower orders of Bermuda, among whom alone could a runagate have
any chance of hiding himself, are all negroes; so that such a one would
be known at once. Their clothes are all marked. Their only chance of a
permanent escape would be in the hold of an American ship; but what
captain of an American or other ship would willingly encumber himself
with an escaped convict? But, nevertheless, men have escaped; and in
one instance, I believe, a convict got away, so that of him no farther
tidings were ever heard.
For the truth of the following tale I will not by any means vouch. If one
were to inquire on the spot one might probably find that the ladies all
believe it, and the old men; that all the young men know exactly how
much of it is false and how much true; and that the steady, middle-aged,
well-to-do islanders are quite convinced that it is romance from
beginning to end. My readers may range themselves with the ladies, the
young men, or the steady, well-to- do, middle-aged islanders, as they

please.
Some years ago, soon after the prison was first established on its
present footing, three men did escape from it, and among them a certain
notorious prisoner named Aaron Trow. Trow's antecedents in England
had not been so villanously bad as those of many of his fellow-convicts,
though the one offence for which he was punished had been of a deep
dye: he had shed man's blood. At a period of great distress in a
manufacturing town he had led men on to riot, and with his own hand
had slain the first constable who had endeavoured to do his duty against
him. There had been courage in the doing of the deed, and probably no
malice; but the deed, let its moral blackness have been what it might,
had sent him to Bermuda, with a sentence against him of penal
servitude for life. Had he been then amenable to prison
discipline,--even then, with such a sentence against him as that,--he
might have won his way back, after the lapse of years, to the children,
and perhaps, to the wife, that he had left behind him; but he was
amenable to no rules--to no