Available for groioing fresh Vegetables. 2jg 



done, in cultivating a number of plots of ground with cereals 

 and vegetables, potatoes especially returning from time to "time 

 an excellent yield. Of these useful tubers, which grow with 

 remarkable luxuriance in the turf-soil of the island, they raise 

 from Go to 80 cwt. annually. Fresh vegetables being articles 

 in great request are more particularly made available by the 

 inhabitants of St. Paul, byway of barter, when trafficking with 

 the whalers, from 20 to 30 of which touch here in the year, to 

 exchange their salt fish, rice, tobacco, cheese, brandy, &c., for 

 the fresh provisions grown on the island. The number of 

 vessels that pass within sight of St. Paul in the course of a 

 year may be reckoned at from 100 to 150, of which, however, 

 only a very few, except the whalers, visit the island.* In the 

 year 1857, for example, it occurred only twice (one case being 

 an English man-of-war), that passing ships sent boats to the 

 island, five months of the year having elapsed in the first 

 instance, and two in the second. 



When the take of fish in the immediate vicinity of the 

 island does not seem sufficiently remunerative, the fishermen 

 occasionally launch out to greater distances. They then bring 

 out from the basin of the crater the barque that brought them 

 from Bourbon to St. Paul, and remain at sea for several days, 



* All the Dutch Indiamen on the home voyage from Batavia, during the months 

 of October tiU May, have been for many years in the habit of running south till 

 they sighted St. Paul, so as to catch the S. E. Trades. But it has never been the 

 policy of the Dutch to atti'act attention to tlie eastern seas, and accordingly no infor- 

 mation found its way to Europe respecting these interesting islands, till the period 

 mentioned in the text. 



