136 THE ATLANTIC. [chap. iir. 



dance of vegetables, milk, and butter. In 1829, when Captain 

 Morrell visited it in the United States ship Antarctic, the col- 

 ony included twenty-seven families, and they were able to sup- 

 ply passing ships with bullocks, cows, sheep, and pigs, and fresh 

 vegetables and milk in any quantity. In 1836 there was a 

 population of forty-two on the island ; and in 1852, when Cap- 

 tain Denhani visited and sketched and roughly surveyed the 

 group, it amounted to eighty-five, and he describes " the young 

 men and women as partaking of the mulatto caste, the wives of 

 the first settlers being natives of the Cape of Good Hope and 

 St. Helena ; but the children of the second generation he would 

 term handsome brunettes of a strikingly fine figure." They 

 were all, at tliat time, members of the Church of England, 

 under the pastoral charge of the Eev. W. F. Taylor, who had 

 been sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 

 an unknown benefactor having generously jjlaced one thousand 

 pounds at the disposal of the society, to supply the colony with 

 a clergyman for five years. Captain Denham S23eaks highly of 

 the healthiness of the climate; he says that none of the ordi- 

 nary epidemic diseases, whether of adults or of children, had 

 reached the islands. The Rev. Mr. Taylor left in 1857, in 

 H.M.S. Geyser, and with him forty -seven of the inhabitants 

 left the island and went to the Cape of Good Hope. The con- 

 dition and prospects of the settleiuent had someM'hat altered. 

 In its early days fur-seals with pelts of good quality, inferior 

 only to those from some of the Antarctic islands, were very 

 abundant, and vessels could fill up at short notice with oil ; it 

 was therefore a favorite rendezvous for American sealers, and 

 the islanders got a ready market and good prices for their prod- 

 uce. Gradually, however, the great sea beasts were reduced 

 in number, the sealers and whalers had to pursue their craft 

 farther afield, and Tristan d'Acunha became only an occasional 

 place of call. Another unfavorable change had taken place ; 

 in the early days the great majority of the population were 



