After lunch I went ashore with Worsley and some others of the party. We went in an “island” boat. Worsley, known amongst the South Sea Islanders as “Tally ho,” from his habit when approaching through the surf of shouting the well-known hunting call, “Yoicks! Tally ho, tally ho, tally ho-ooo-oh!” insisted on taking the steer oar, and as the boat neared the beach raised his cry, to the amusement of the crew and the people on shore. They enjoy little jokes. On the beach there was a scene of activity. The goods were being loaded into small carts, each drawn by two bullocks. They were rough and primitive affairs. The wheels were made from sections of a tree which had been blown up on the island some years previously. The oxen were small but strong looking.
The way from the beach led up a winding rocky pathway to the top of a cliff, and thence along to the settlement, distant about half a mile.
Tristan da Cunha, in the greater part of its extent, is very mountainous, but on the northern side there is a stretch of flat land about six miles long and from half to one mile deep. Behind it rises the mountain, sheer and steep, to a height of from two to three thousand feet, from where it slopes more gradually to the summit. In front cliffs, fifty or sixty feet high, drop abruptly to the sea, but are broken here and there by beaches of black sand.
The settlement, composed of a number of small stone cottages, is situated on the eastern end of the flat land, which is grass-covered and strewn with boulders. The western end provides good grazing ground for sheep and cattle, and in the sheltered spots small portions are set aside for growing potatoes.
On the way we met several women and children. The women were well built and healthy looking, and wore, like the men, a variety of clothing. They also showed differences of colour and feature, one whom I noticed being quite blonde. The children are attractive, very quiet and demure in their deportment—what the islanders themselves call “old fashioned.” I do not think their demureness was altogether due to the presence of strangers amongst them, for before I finally left the island I had had a chance to observe them in their play and made friends with a number of them, but I never saw anything approaching boisterousness.
In many respects the settlement differed little from an Irish village. Geese waddled about the common and showed their resentment of too close an approach with the usual hissing and stretching of the neck. All about were little pigs—long-nosed and lean-flanked, obviously not far removed in type from the original “wild pig”—which were rooting up the earth with their snouts. Each had an attendant fowl which accompanied it in its movements and picked at the newly turned earth. There are a number of dogs on the island, mongrel curs of which one would grudge even the admission that they were “just dog,” and there seems to be a regular feud between them and the pigs. Whenever a dog, accompanying his master on a walk, encounters a pig, it rushes up, barking furiously, and only desists when the pig, squealing violently, is stretched at full speed. The pig gets very angry, but immediately after goes on rooting. There was something very ludicrous about this little piece of byplay, which always provoked a laugh from us. On the slope behind the settlement a flock of sheep, numbering a hundred or so, was grazing. Here and there about the common I saw donkeys, all of them very diminutive.
At the entrance to the settlement we came to a brisk little stream of clear water, which we crossed by a ford. We were met by Mr. Rogers, the missionary, who had recently come to the island.
There are in all about twenty completed houses and others of which the walls have been built, but which, from lack of material, have never been roofed over. The first one we came to belonged to Henry Green, a small, self-reliant man whom we had already met on the ship. He gave us a cordial invitation to come in at any time we cared. He had a small flagstaff, from which flew a Union Jack that had been presented to the islanders.
Commander Wild had detailed me to stay on Tristan da Cunha whilst the ship proceeded to Nightingale and Inaccessible Islands, and I now made inquiries as to where I could stay. Bob Glass said immediately: “You come right ’long to my house, and I’ll tell my wife she got to look after you and give you everything she got, which ain’t much, I may tell you.” He now led me to it, and introduced me to his wife and family, which numbered eight—six boys and two girls. His wife, who was a second wife and not the mother of any of his children, was a very pleasant woman, with quiet, natural manners. She told me she would be glad to put me up for as long as I cared to stay on the island. The members of the family varied in age from a young man of twenty-two years—who was married and had two children of his own—to a bright lad of eight. The girls, aged twenty and seventeen respectively, seemed to be very pleasant, but had little to say, being, I think, rather shy and bashful in the presence of a stranger. Bob Glass said to me after: “That gel Wilet”—Violet, the elder—“she’s a foine gel; me and she never had a crōss word. But that there Dōrothee—she’s wery loively.” Quite what form the liveliness took I never learnt, but his words led me to believe that Miss Dorothy was a less dutiful and obedient daughter than Violet.
This house resembles all the other houses of the settlement, which are erected to more or less the same design, being long, low, oblong structures built of stones of considerable size and weight. The side walls are usually a little more than two feet thick, and the end walls are heavily buttressed. They all face the same way, so as to be end on to the prevailing winds, which blow at times with great strength and with sudden violent gusts.