Milli mála - 05.07.2016, Blaðsíða 44

PHILIP V. ALLINGHAM

Milli mála 7/2015

48
India detailing his battlefield experiences) could be applied
to almost any British garrison from Fort York in Ontario to
Government Hill at Singapore and Cawnpore in India:

It was a pretty place: in all its arrangements partly South American
and partly English, and very agreeable to look at on that account,
being like a bit of home that had got chipped off and had floated
away to that spot, accommodating itself to circumstances as it
drifted along. The huts of the Sambos, to the number of five-and-
twenty, perhaps, were down by the beach to the left of the an-
chorage. On the right was a sort of barrack, with a South Ameri-
can Flag and the Union Jack, flying from the same staff, where the
little English colony could all come together, if they saw occasion.
It was a walled square of building, with a sort of pleasure-ground
inside, and inside that again a sunken block like a powder maga-
zine, with a little square trench round it, and steps down to the
door. . . . .
Then, as we stood in the shade, she showed us (being as af-
fable as beautiful), how the different families lived in their sepa-
rate houses, and how there was a general house for stores, and a
general reading-room, and a general room for music and dancing,
and a room for Church; and how there were other houses on the
rising ground called the Signal Hill, where they lived in the hotter
weather.18

18 Charles Dickens, “Chapter 1: The Island of Silver Store,” The Perils of Certain Eng-
lish Prisoners, and Their Treasure in Women, Silver, and Jewels (Household Words,
7 December 1857), Christmas Stories from “Household Words” and “All the Year
Round,” il. Edgar Dalziel (The Household Edition. Vol. 21. London: Chapman &
Hall, 1879. Rpt. 1892), p. 45.