"MONSIEUR LE GOUVERNEUR,
"Je me permets de vous prier d'avoir l'extrême obligeance de m'indiquer le nombre total des habitants de Tristan da Cunha avec Dépendances et la quantité de ceux qui appartiennent à la religion mahométane, avec l'indication du nombre des Sunites ou Chütes et de leur nationalité respective.
"Dans l'attente de votre réponse je vous prie, Monsieur le Gouverneur, de vouloir bien agréer mes salutations distinguées et mes remerciments anticipées."
There is a very interesting letter from the Dixie professor of Ecclesiastical History, Cambridge, who asks Graham to collect for him whelks, limpets, periwinkles, snails, cowries, etc. Here is an extract from it—
"It is not, however, the shells I care for, but the teeth of the animals within. I have just one species from Tristan—a small land shell of an interesting genus (Balea). One species is European, one Japanese, the third Tristan. Its nearest ally is an enormous Eurasian genus (Clausilia) of seven hundred species which hardly gets into Africa and does not cross Behring Strait, though there are thirty more in Peru and one in Porto Rico. So you see how strangely isolated your Tristan species is. Its nearest cousins are in Tunis and Abyssinia. I fancy the land shells of Tristan will not have a Magellanic character like the one Kerguelen species. Anyhow they are sure to be intensely interesting."
Good Friday.—We have had a beautiful day, just like a spring day at home. We had service at 10.30 which lasted a little over an hour. About fifty-eight were present. The men are not attending so well now. The two new arrivals do not come to church, and I think it induces the others to stay away. We had service again at three o'clock, after which Graham and I went to inquire after Mrs. H. Green, who has been ailing with rheumatism. It is an old complaint, and due, it is thought, to exposure on the mountain years ago. She went up with a party on to the Base; a fog came on, and she became separated from her companions and wandered hopelessly about with her dog. The fog was followed by a heavy thunderstorm with vivid lightning, and she was drenched through. Barefoot and wet to the bone she lay all night in the ferns with the dog at her side. Next morning her hands were so swollen with the cold she had no use in them until the sun came out and warmed them. Her only food was birds' eggs which she occasionally sucked. She was not found till the next afternoon, though a search party had been out twice to look for her. She was in bed for a week, and ever since has been subject every few years to prolonged rheumatic attacks accompanied by great depression which often lasts for months. She is a nice-minded woman, very quiet, and grateful for anything done for her. In this she is unlike many who accept everything as a matter of course.
The three Repetto girls and Sophy have been weeding the garden, which has been rather neglected lately. We have planted some trees in it grown from Eucalyptus seed collected on Table Mountain. I planted it here in pots which I kept in the dark, and it came up well. About a hundred and sixty sturdy little trees are the result. In years to come they may be useful for firewood. In a book on forestry left here by Mr. Tooke, they are said to be very useful trees to grow for this purpose, as they bear lopping well.
Easter Sunday.—At the Holy Communion to-day there were twenty present; some coming for the first time, and one or two men coming who had not communicated since Mr. Dodgson's time. All who had been prepared for Confirmation were invited except the boys and girls.
I am thinking of starting a Bible class for girls on Sundays. I feel I do so little for them. We see most of those girls whose ages range from nine to thirteen.
A thunderstorm has just passed over us; the effects on sea and land were most beautiful, everything assuming such a vivid colouring as one only occasionally sees.