THE CHALLENGER MADE FAST TO ST. PAUL’S ROCKS (SOUTH ATLANTIC).
The observations made for deep-sea temperatures gave some remarkable results. Here, among the icebergs, a band or stratum of water was found, at a depth of eighty to 200 fathoms, colder than the water either above or below it. Take one day as an example: on the 19th of February the surface temperature of the sea-water was 32°; at 100 fathoms it was 29·2°; while at 300 fathoms it had risen to 33°. In the Atlantic, on the eastern side about the tropics, the bottom temperature was found to be very uniform at 35·2°, while it might be broiling hot on the surface. Further south, on the west side of the Atlantic below the equator, the bottom was found to be very nearly three degrees cooler. It is believed that the cold current enters the Atlantic from the Antarctic, and does not rise to within 1,700 fathoms of the surface. These, and many kindred points, belong more properly to another section of this work, to be hereafter discussed.
THE NATURALIST’S ROOM ON BOARD THE “CHALLENGER.”
The Challenger had crossed, and sounded, and dredged the broad Atlantic from Madeira to the West Indies—finding their deepest water off the Virgin Islands; thence to Halifax, Nova Scotia; recrossed it to the Azores, Canary, and Cape de Verde Islands; recrossed it once more in a great zig-zag from the African coast, through the equatorial regions to Bahia, Brazil; and thence, if the expression may be used, by a great angular [pg 38]sweep through the Southern Ocean to Tristan d’Acunha en route to the Cape, where they made an interesting discovery, one that, unlike their other findings, was most interesting to the discovered also. It was that of two modern Robinson Crusoes, who had been living by themselves a couple of years on a desolate rocky island, the name of which, “Inaccessible,” rightly describes its character and position in mid ocean. Juan Fernandez, the locale of Defoe’s immortal story, is nothing to it now-a-days, and is constantly visited. On arrival at the island of Tristan d’Acunha, itself a miserable settlement of about a dozen cottages, the people, mostly from the Cape and St. Helena, some of them mulattoes, informed the officers of the Challenger that two Germans, brothers, had some time before settled, for the purpose of catching seals, on a small island about thirty miles off, and that, not having been over there or seen any signs of them for a long time, they feared that they had perished. It turned out afterwards that the Tristan d’Acunha people had not taken any trouble in the matter, looking on them as interlopers on their fishing-grounds. They had promised to send them some animals—a bull, cow, and heifer—but, although they had stock and fowls of all kinds, had left them to their fate. But first as to this [pg 39]little-known Tristan d’Acunha, of which Lord George Campbell[30] furnishes the following account:—“It is a circular-shaped island, some nine miles in diameter, a peak rising in the centre 8,300 feet high—a fine sight, snow-covered as it is two-thirds of the way down. In the time of Napoleon a guard of our marines was sent there from the Cape; but the connection between Nap’s being caged at St. Helena and a guard of marines occupying this island is not very obvious, is it? Any way, that was the commencement of a settlement which has continued with varying numbers to this day, the marines having long ago been withdrawn, and now eighty-six people—men, women, and children—live here.... A precipitous wall of cliff, rising abruptly from the sea, encircles the island, excepting where the settlement is, and there the cliff recedes and leaves a long grass slope of considerable extent, covered with grey boulders. The cottages, in number about a dozen, look very Scotch from the ship, with their white walls, straw roofs, and stone dykes around them. Sheep, cattle, pigs, geese, ducks, and fowls they have in plenty, also potatoes and other vegetables, all of which they sell to whalers, who give them flour or money in exchange. The appearance of the place makes one shudder; it looks so thoroughly as though it were always blowing there—which, indeed, it is, heavy storms continually sweeping over, killing their cattle right and left before they have time to drive them under shelter. They say that they have lost 100 head of cattle lately by these storms, which kill the animals, particularly the calves, from sheer fatigue.” The men of the place often go whaling or sealing cruises with the ships that touch there.
DREDGING IMPLEMENTS USED BY THE “CHALLENGER.”
Fig. 1, Sounding machines. Fig. 2, Slip water-bottles. Fig. 3, Deep-sea thermometer. Fig. 4, The dredge. Fig. 5, Cup sounding lead.
The Challenger steamed slowly over to Inaccessible Island during the night, and anchored next morning off its northern side, where rose a magnificent wall of black cliff, splashed green with moss and ferns, rising sheer 1,300 feet above the sea. Between two headlands a strip of stony beach, with a small hut on it, could be seen. This was the residence of our two Crusoes.
Their story, told when the first exuberance of joy at the prospect of being taken off the island had passed away, was as follows:—One of the brothers had been cast away on Tristan d’Acunha some years before, in consequence of the burning of his ship. There he and his companions of the crew had been kindly treated by the settlers, and told that at one of the neighbouring islands 1,700 seals had been captured in one season. Telling this to a brother when he at last reached home in the Fatherland, the two of them, fired with the ambition of acquiring money quickly, determined to exile themselves for a while to the islands. By taking passage on an outward-bound steamer from Southampton, and later transferring themselves to a whaler, they reached their destination in safety on the 27th of November, 1871. They had purchased an old whale-boat—mast, sails, and oars complete—and landed with a fair supply of flour, biscuit, coffee, tea, sugar, salt, and tobacco, sufficient for present needs. They had blankets and some covers, which were easily filled with bird’s feathers—a German could hardly forget his national luxury, his feather-bed. They had provided themselves with a wheelbarrow, sundry tools, pot and kettles; a short Enfield rifle, and an old fowling-piece, and a very limited supply [pg 40]of powder, bullets, and shot. They had also sensibly provided themselves with some seeds, so that, all in all, they started life on the island under favourable circumstances.