St Helena to become Africa-South America stepping stone

Saint Helena, a British overseas territory, is a distant island located in the South Atlantic Ocean  about 1950 kilometers west of the coast of southwest Africa. The nearest land is Ascension Island, site of a US Air Force auxiliary airfield, which is 1125 km in a northwesterly directio . The remote inhabited island in the world, Tristan da Cunh,a is located 2100 kilometers to the south.

Uninhabited when it was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, Saint Helena was used as a garrison for the British during the eighteenth century, and for a long time  it served as important resting place for ships that sail from Europe, Asia and South Africa. Its importance as a port declined after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

The most famous resident of St. Helena Island was Napoleon Bonaparte, who was exiled here by the British from 1815 until his death in 1821. Today you can visit places which mark his sad reside there. The island now has about 4,000 residents. 

Jamestown is the strangest settlement in Saint Helena. The town is long, thin and densely populated, with crowded streets and long. Some street corners are decorated with shrubs and trees. The surrounding terrain is rugged and steep and rockfalls are frequent, sometimes damaging the buildings.

Emblematic for the city is Jacob's Ladder, a stairway of 699 steps, built in 1829 to link the former Jamestown fort on Ladder Hill. The scale is very popular among tourists, it is illuminated at night and every year is the focus of a ceremony attended by people from all over the world.