CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
AN OCEAN COLONY.
Fritz and Eric wished to go ashore the moment the anchor plunged intothe water and the chain cable grated through the hawse hole; but,darkness setting in almost immediately after sunset, as is usual in suchsoutherly latitudes, their landing had to be postponed until the nextmorning, when the skipper told them they would have plenty of time toinspect the little ocean colony of Tristan d'Acunha--that is, should nota westerly-wind set in, bringing with it a heavy swell, as it invariablydid; for, this would cause them "to cut and run from their anchorage ina jiffy," if they did not desire to lay the ship's bones on the rocks byHerald Point, which he, "for one," he said, had no intention of doing.
However, the wind still remained in the same quarter, blowing steadilyfrom the south-east, which made it calm where the _Pilot's Bride_ waslying--Captain Brown from previous experience knowing the safest berthto take up--so she did not have to shift her berth. When morning broke,too, the brothers had a better view of the place than on the eveningbefore; for then, only a hasty peep at it could be obtained before itwas hidden by night.
The small bay in which the ship was moored opened to the westward; and,on the right, a slope of rough pasture land, about a quarter of a milein width, ran up from the beach to an almost precipitous wall of rock, athousand feet or more in height--although a sort of misty vapour hungover it, which prevented Fritz from gauging its right altitude. On theleft-hand side, the wall of rock came sheer down into the sea, leavingonly a few yards of narrow shingle, on which the surf noisily broke. Astream leaped down from the high ground, nearly opposite the vessel, andthe low fall with which it tumbled into the bay at this point indicatedthat there would be found the best landing-place, an opinion whichCaptain Brown confirmed as soon as he came on deck.
"I guess, though," said the skipper, pointing out a red flag which Fritzcould notice just being hoisted on one of the cottage chimneys in thedistance, "we needn't hurry 'bout launchin' a boat, fur some o' themislanders are comin' off to pay us a visit an' will take you ashore.Thet's their signal for communicatin' with any vessel thet calls inhere. Run up our ensign, Mr Dort," he added to Eric, who stood at hisstation on the lee side of the mizzen mast; "an' tell 'em to fire thegun forrud, jest to give 'em a kinder sort o' salute, you know. UncleSam likes to do the civil, the same as other men-o'-war when they goesto foreign ports!"
These orders were obeyed; and no sooner were the "Stars and Stripes" runup to the masthead and the report of the little gun on the topgallantfo'c's'le heard reverberating through the distant mountain tops--thesound of the discharge being caught up and echoed between the narrowarms of the bay--than a smart whale-boat, pulled by eight men and with awhite-bearded, venerable-looking individual seated in the stern-sheets,was seen coming out from the very spot which Fritz had determined to bethe landing-place.
They were soon alongside the _Pilot's Bride_; when the old man--whointroduced himself as Green, the oldest inhabitant of the island andwith whom Captain Brown had already had an acquaintance of some years'duration--cordially invited Fritz to land, the skipper having explainedthat he wished to see the place and hear all about it. He told thebrothers aside, however, that perhaps they'd better not mention theirintention of settling on Inaccessible Island, for the inhabitants ofTristan, who sent expeditions every year on sealing excursions there,might not like to hear this news.
While on their way to the shore with the old man and four of theislanders--the other Tristaners remaining on board the ship to selectcertain articles they required from her stores and arrange for thebarter of fresh meat and potatoes with Captain Brown in exchange--Fritzobserved that, some distance out from the land, there was a sort ofnatural breakwater, composed of the long, flat leaves of a giant speciesof seaweed which grew up from the bottom, where its roots extended tothe depth of fifteen fathoms. This, old Green pointed out, preventedthe rollers, when the wind was from the westward, from breaking tooviolently on the shore, between which and the floating weed was a beltof calm water, as undisturbed as the surface of a mountain tarn.
The landing-place was of fine black sand, showing the volcanic characterof the mountain peak above, which Green said was over eight thousandfeet high and had an extinct crater on the top; and, when Fritz and hisbrother had jumped out of the boat, they proceeded up to the littlesettlement of the islanders, which was called "Edinburgh" out ofcompliment to his Royal Highness Prince Alfred, who had visited theplace when cruising in HMS _Galatea_, just four years before theirlanding.
The village consisted of some dozen cottages or so, roughly built ofsquare blocks of hewn stone dovetailed into each other, without mortar,and thatched with tussock-grass. The houses were scattered about, eachin its own little garden, enclosed by walls of loosely piled stonesabout four feet high; but, as it was now the early spring of Tristan,these had very little growing in them. One of the enclosures, Fritznoticed, had a lot of marigolds in flower, another, several dwarfstrawberry plants just budding, while a third was filled with youngonions; but the majority displayed only the same coarse, long tussock-grass with which the cottages were thatched.
When the brothers came to examine the houses more closely, they wereparticularly struck with the neatness with which they were constructedand the extreme labour that must have been expended on them.
Apart from the difficulty of procuring wood, which they could only getfrom stray whaling ships, the islanders are obliged to build theirdwellings of stone, in order to prevent their being demolished by thefierce and frequent hurricanes that assail the isolated little spot,exposed as it is to all the rude blustering blasts that career over theexpanse of the Atlantic. The cottages are, therefore, put together witha dark-brown, soft sort of stone, which is hewn out in great blocks fromthe cliffs above the settlement and afterwards shaped with greataccuracy and care with the axe. Many of these masses of stone areupwards of a ton in weight; but, still, they are cut so as to lock intoone another in a double row to form the main wall, which is someeighteen inches thick, with smaller pieces of stone, selected with equalcare as to their fitting, placed in between. There is no lime on theisland, so that the blocks are put together on the cyclopean plan,without cement. They are also raised into their places in the sameprimitive fashion, strong spars being used for inclined planes, up whichthese monoliths are pushed by manual labour in a similar way to thatdescribed in the old hieroglyphics of the Nineveh marbles. With allthese precautions as to strength, however, the sou'-westers blow withsuch fierceness into the little bay where the colony is situated, thatmany of these massive buildings, Green said, were constantly blown down,the huge blocks being tumbled about like pieces of cork!
The roofs were thatched with the long grass that Fritz had seen growingin the gardens and with which he had later on a closer and more painfulacquaintance, the tussock fibres being fastened inside to light polesthat were attached to rafters placed horizontally, while the ridgesoutside were covered with bands of green turf, firmly fixed on.
As for the colony, which numbered some eighty souls in all, it consistedof fifteen families, who possessed from five to six hundred head ofcattle and about an equal supply of sheep, with lots of pigs andpoultry, each family having its own stock in the same way that eachcultivated its own garden; but, there was a common grazing ground, wherealso large quantities of potatoes were raised--the trade of the islandbeing principally with the American whalers, who take supplies of freshmeat and vegetables, for which they barter manufactured goods, householdstuffs, and "notions."
During their visit, Fritz and Eric were hospitably entertained by theold man Green at his cottage, which had three large rooms and was thebest in the place; and the roast pig which furnished the main dish ofthe banquet was all the more toothsome, by reason of the long time thebrothers had been at sea and so deprived of fresh meat and those goodthings of the land, to which they had grown somewhat accustomed duringtheir stay at the comfortable shanty on Narraganset Bay under MrsBrown's auspices.
Indirectly, too, Fritz found out a great deal about Inaccessible Island;and, the more he heard, the more firmly rooted became his determinationto settle there. The seals, old Green said, were numerous enough; but,he added that the islanders were only able to pay a short visit inDecember every year, and so lost considerable chances of taking more ofthem.
"Aha," thought Fritz, "we'll be there altogether, and so will haveopportunities for taking them all the year round. Tristaners, my goodpeople, look out for your sealskins and oil in future; we, crusoes, aregoing into the business wholesale!"
When the brothers were rowed back to the ship in the evening--havingspent the entire day on the island in noticing what would be most usefulto themselves subsequently for the new life they were about to adopt--the other Tristaners who had remained on board choosing goods returnedto the shore, promising to send the value of the articles they hadselected in beef and potatoes on the following morning. Before turningin for the night, however, Captain Brown gave Fritz to read a newspaperextract which he had posted into his logbook. This detailed the earlyhistory of the little colony, and the gist of it was as follows:--
Although discovered as early as the year 1506 by d'Acunha, the firstcomparatively modern navigator who visited the island was the captain ofan American ship--the _Industry_, a whaler sailing from Philadelphia--who remained at Tristan from August, 1790, to April, 1791, his peoplepitching their tents on almost the precise spot now occupied by thesettlement. At the time of this vessel's visit, it was mentioned thatthere was plenty of wood of a small growth excellent for firewood; butthis Fritz noticed was not the case when he inspected the place duringthe day, hardly anything but slight brush being apparent beyond thetussock-grass. The American captain also stated that the amount of seaanimals of all kinds on the island--whales, seals, and penguins--wasalmost inexhaustible, his party having procured over six thousandsealskins during their stay of seven months, besides killing more whalesthan they could find room for the oil from them in their ship! This,too, had become altered during the years which had elapsed, the sealsgetting scarcer at Tristan now, through the wholesale war carried onagainst them by the islanders, who latterly, with the exception of thevisits they paid to Inaccessible Island and Nightingale Islet--accordingto old Green's account--had almost abandoned the pursuit for sheer wantof sport.
The next mention of Tristan d'Acunha, as related in the printedchronicle Fritz read, was in the year after the American captain'ssojourn there, when two British ships of war, the _Lion_ and_Hindostan_, which were probably East Indiamen, with the English embassyto China on board, anchored off the north side of the island under thecliff of the mountain peak; but, a sudden squall coming on, thesevessels had to leave without investigating the place thoroughly,although their commanders described it as being uninhabited at thattime.
Nine years later, the captain of another ship that called there foundthree Americans settled on the island, preparing sealskins and boilingdown oil. Goats and pigs had been set adrift by some of the earliervisitors, as well as vegetables planted, and these colonists appeared tobe in a very flourishing condition, declaring themselves perfectlycontented to pass their lives there. One of the men, indeed, had drawnup a proclamation, stating that he was the king of the country, a titlewhich the others acknowledged; and the three, the monarch and his twosubjects, had cleared about fifty acres of land, which they had sownwith various things, including coffee-trees and sugar-canes; but,whether this plantation turned out unsuccessful, or from some othernotion, the "king" and his colleagues abandoned the settlement--theplace remaining deserted until the year 1817, when, during NapoleonBuonaparte's captivity at Saint Helena, the island was formally takenpossession of by the English Government, a guard of soldiers beingespecially drafted thither for its protection, selected from the Cape ofGood Hope garrison.
This was, undoubtedly, the foundation of the present colony; for,although the military picket was withdrawn in the following year, acorporal of artillery with his wife and two brother soldiers, whoexpressed a desire to remain on the island, stayed behind. Since then,Tristan has always been inhabited--the original little colony of foursouls having formed the nucleus of the present settlement of overeighty, men joining it at various times from passing whalers, whilewomen were imported from the Cape when wives were wanted. From the factof these latter being mostly Hottentots, the complexion of the youngermen, Fritz noticed, was somewhat darker than that of Europeans. Thisexplained what the skipper meant, on first telling him about the island,when he said the inhabitants were "mulattoes"; although Fritz thoughtthem only of a brunette tinge, for they were of much lighter hue thanmany Spaniards and Italians whom he had met on the Continent.
Glass, the ex-artilleryman and original founder of the Englishsettlement, was a Scotchman, born at Kelso. He seems to have been a manof great principle and energy, these qualities gaining for him thecomplete confidence of the little community over which his authority wasquite of a patriarchal character. For thirty-seven years he maintainedhis position as leader, representing the colony in all its transactionswith passing ships and showing himself just and honest in his dealings.The islanders had always been English-speaking, and having strongBritish sympathies, "Governor Glass," as he was styled, receivedpermission from one of the naval officers visiting the island to hoistthe red ensign, as a signal to vessels going by. This slight officialrecognition was all the notice that the settlement has received fromEngland ever since its establishment--that is, beyond the sending out ofa chaplain there by the "Religious Tract Society," who remained for fiveyears and when leaving spoke of the members of the little settlement asbeing so highly moral that they did not require any spiritualministration, "there not being a vice in the colony to contend with!"
To this latter statement, Fritz found the skipper had appended aneccentric footnote:-- "'Cos why, there ain't no rum handier than theCape, the little to be got from the whalers visiting the spot--an' theyhave little enough from me, you bet!--being speedily guzzled down by theold birds, an' the young uns never gettin' a taste o' the pizen!"
On Glass's death, he was succeeded in the leadership of the colony byGreen, the next oldest man, who now lived in the house of the latefounder of the settlement and hoisted the English ensign in his turn.Green was a venerable-looking man, with a long white beard, and seemed,from what Fritz could gather in his different conversations with theislanders, to have successfully followed in his predecessor's footsteps.
Since the Duke of Edinburgh's visit in the _Galatea_, many other straymen-of-war have occasionally called to see how the islanders weregetting on; but the principal trading communication they have has alwaysbeen with American whalers, some round dozen of which call at Tristanyearly for the purposes of barter.
"An' I guess it's a downright shame," said Captain Brown, whenmentioning this latter fact to Fritz, "thet they don't fly the star-spangled banner instead o' thet there rag of a British ensign! If itweren't for us whalers, they'd starve fur want of wood to warmthemselves in winter; an', who'd buy their beef an' mutton an' fixins,if we didn't call in, hey?"
"That's a conundrum, and I give it up," answered Fritz with a laugh.
"Ah, you're a sly coon," said the skipper, sailing away to his cabin."I guess it's 'bout time to bunk in, mister, so I'm off. Good-night!"
"Good-night!" returned Fritz, shutting up the log book and going his waylikewise to the small state room set apart for the use of himself andhis brother, where he found Eric asleep and snoring away soundly, thetramping about ashore having completely tired out the lad.
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