The worthy Governor William Glass had a curious yarn to tell of that first ruler of the island, Jonathan Lambert of Salem, who had published his grandiose proclamations and whose ambitious dreams were so soon eclipsed. The accepted account is that he was drowned while out in his boat, but the British garrison had found on the island a man who said he had been there with Lambert and that he suspected another companion of the first king of Tristan da Cunha of having made away with him in order to secure his hoard of gold. Afraid of discovery, the regicide had fled the island, leaving the treasure behind him.
The ingenious inventor of this narrative had professed to know where the treasure was buried,
and that he would some day reveal it to the man of the garrison who pleased him most, thus insuring good treatment from the men, each hoping to be favored. But one day after drinking immoderately of liquor he was taken suddenly ill and expired before he could explain to his comrades where his treasure was concealed.
At any rate, the story sufficed to supply the imaginative vagabond with free rum and tobacco, which, no doubt, was the end in view.
Augustus Earle hunted the wild goats, which had multiplied on the mountain-slopes, and he has left us this pleasing picture of the simple and righteous existence led by these dwellers on remote Tristan da Cunha:
Governor Glass informed me that the last time they had ascended the mountain after goats, one of the party got too close to the precipice and fell down several hundred feet. They found the corpse next day in a miserably mangled state. They interred it in the garden near their settlement and placed at the head of the grave a board with his name and age, together with an account of the accident which caused his death, and the remark that it happened on a Sunday, a dreadful warning to Sabbath-breakers. The people all say they will nevermore ascend the mountain on that sacred day. Indeed, from all I have seen of them, they pay every respect to the duties of religion that lies in their power.
My clothes beginning to wear out, my kind host, who was an excellent tailor, made me a pair of trousers consisting of sail cloth and the rear of dried goat’s skin, the hair outside, which they all assured me would be very convenient in sliding down the mountains. I laughed heartily when I first sported this Robinson Crusoe habiliment. “Never mind how you look, sir,” said my kind host, “His Majesty himself, God bless him, if he had been left here as you were, could look no better.”
Governor William Glass ruled over the island for thirty-five years, until his death in 1853. By that time the population had increased to a hundred souls, and a flourishing trade was carried on in provisioning the fleet of American whalers out of New Bedford and Nantucket which cruised in those waters. A few years later, twenty-five of the younger men and women emigrated to the United States, stirred by a natural ambition to see more of the world. At the death of Governor Glass, an old man-of-war’s-man, William Cotton, who had been for three years one of Napoleon’s guards at St. Helena, became the head of the community.
To-day the settlement consists of a hundred people or so, most of them of the old British strain, and many of them descended from the families of Corporal William Glass of the Royal Artillery and the young seaman Stephen White and his devoted Peggy who were wrecked in the Blenden Hall, East Indiaman, a century ago. They manage their own affairs without any written laws, and are described by recent visitors as religious, hospitable to strangers, industrious, healthy, and long-lived.
The British Government has kept a paternal eye on them, and from time to time a minister of the Church of England has served in the stone chapel and the trim little school-house. Their worldly wealth is in cattle, sheep, apple and peach orchards, and they are unvexed by politics, the League of Nations, or the social unrest. Enviable people of Tristan da Cunha! And peace to the memories of old William Glass and Jonathan Lambert, and the faithful sweethearts of the stately old Blenden Hall!