144 THE ATLANTIC. [chap. in. 



he gets some grazing rights, and the rest of the settlers assist 

 him in fencing his patch, and in working it and preparing it 

 for a first crop. They then contribute the necessary cattle, 

 sheep, potato-seed, etc, to start him ; contributions which he no 

 doubt repays when he is in a position to do so, under some def- 

 inite understanding, for the Tristan Islanders have a very prac- 

 tical knowledge of the value of things. There seems to be a 

 harmonious arrangement among them for assisting one another 

 in their work, such assistance being repaid either in kind or in 

 produce or money. The community is under no regular sys- 

 tem of laws ; every thing appears to go by a kind of general 

 understanding. When difficulties occur, they are referred to 

 Green, and perhaps to others, and are settled by the general 

 sense. This system is probably another great source of the ap- 

 parently exceptional morality of the place : in so small a com- 

 munity where all are so entirely interdependent, no misconduct 

 affecting the interests of others can be tolerated or easily con- 

 cealed, and as there is no special machinery for the detection 

 and punishment of offenses, the final remedy lies in the hands 

 of the men themselves, who are most of them young and stal- 

 wart, and well able to keep unruliness in check. 



The island of Tristan is almost circular, about seven miles in 

 diameter. The position of Herald Point, close to the settle- 

 ment, is lat. 37° 2' W S., long. 12° 18' 30'^ W., so that it nearly 

 corresponds in latitude with the Acores and the southern point 

 of Spain in the northern hemisphere. The island is entirely 

 volcanic; the cliff — upward of a thousand feet high — which 

 encircles it, breached here and there by steej3 ravines, is formed 

 of thin beds of tuffs and ashes, some of them curiously brecci- 

 ated with angular fragments of basalt ; and layers of lava inter- 

 sected by numerous dikes of varying widths of a close-grained 

 gray dolerite. The cone is very symmetrical, almost as much 

 so as the Peak of Teneriffe, and the flows of lava down its 

 flanks appear as rugged black ridges through the snow. The 



