Mount Actaeon (St Helena)
Actaeon was the name of a hapless hunter who came upon the moon-goddess Diana as she was bathing in a stream. In retribution, Diana turned the man into a deer and he was immediately torn to pieces by his own hounds. The moral of the story is, don't mess with the lady in the moon.
Mount Actaeon and his consort Diana's Peak are at the summit of the island of St Helena. Whereas the greater part of the island is orange-brown and rather barren, the peaks wear a lush carpet of flax. A Victorian writer once described the island as an emerald set in bronze, and a modern one called it a pice of English countryside deposited in the Gobi desert. The reason for the contrast is plain: the sumit wears an almost perpetual cap of cloud.
(Watercolour - 15 x 11" / 38 x 28cm)