Our forenoon was spent in hoisting on deck the stores and the mail-bags and parcels we had brought out from England for these islanders.
Oh, you who sit at home at ease, and grow fretful if the postman is a minute late on his rounds, think of those who depend for news of the outer world on chance exploring expeditions which might call every two or three years or so! Imagine a land that concerns itself not at all with the sensational murder of yesterday nor the pending divorce case of to-morrow, but learns vaguely, long after the last echoes have ceased to ring in the ears of a staggered world, that there has been some sort of a war in Europe! But the seasickness of one of the visitors, due to the _Quest’s_ rolling—we seasoned fellows did not notice it—was of infinitely greater importance. “‘Solid as ocean foam!’—quoth ocean foam!”
Next day certain of us went ashore to have a good look round this far-flung patch of civilization. We had been warned to have a care; that, owing to the paucity of men, the women of the island had a husband-hunting look in their eyes; and so, naturally, we walked warily. There is an ancient deep-sea legend to the effect that a distressed sailor, sole survivor of a deplorable wreck, was washed ashore at Tristan da Cunha in a state of unconsciousness, and wakened to find himself firmly married to most of the eligible females of the island!
Our first visit was to the graveyard. Most sailors, I notice, do visit graveyards first when they go ashore in foreign ports. I don’t know why, unless it is to envy those who lie comfortably asleep instead of being compelled to disturb their slumbers at every turn of the tide.
Tristan da Cunha’s graveyard was not a picture to dazzle the sight. I thought it very dilapidated. Some few of the graves were indicated by crazy crosses, but the large majority were hardly to be distinguished from the surrounding earth. One, it is true, had a wooden slab at the head. The grave of John Glass, however, a native of Kelso, and the first settler—the Robinson Crusoe of the place—was dignified by a marble memorial stone. Other nameless graves were defined meagrely by square-cut blocks.
Tristan da Cunha boasts a good water supply, for it lies in a region of much cloud, and many small streams, born in the higher lands of the interior, flow noisily through the little settlement. Through the ages these streams have cut deep gorges in the rock and look like miniature cañons. All around are boulders, washed down from the hills by the torrential rains that lave the island in the wet seasons; and some of the houses are built crudely of these boulders, which lie ready to hand. The problem of acquiring a house here is a simple one. You carry a few stones to a selected site, pile them together, say the result is a house; a house it is within the meaning of the Act, and as there are no destructive critics to say, “It’s like a house, but is it a house? Where’s your visitors’ bathroom and the lounge hall?”