152 THE ATLANTIC. [chap. iii. 



shovel, two pickaxes, a saw, a liammer, two eliisels, two or tliree 

 gimlets, and some nails ; a kettle, a frying-pan, two saucepans, 

 and knives and forks, and some crockery ; two blankets each, 

 and empty covers which they afterward filled with sea-birds' 

 down. They had a lamp and a bottle of oil, and six dozen 

 boxes of Bryant & May's matches. 



For internal nse they had two hundred pounds of flour, two 

 hundred pounds of rice, one hundred pounds of biscuit, twenty 

 pounds of coffee, ten pounds of tea, thirty pounds of sugar, 

 three pounds of table -salt, a little pepper, eight pounds of 

 tobacco, five bottles of hollands, six bottles of Cape wine, six 

 bottles of vinegar, and some Epsom-salts. A barrel of coarse 

 salt was provided for curing seal -skins, and fourteen empty 

 casks for oil. Their arms and ammunition consisted of a short 

 Enfield rifle, an old German fowling-piece, two and a half 

 pounds of powder, two hundred bullets, and four sheath-knives. 

 The captain of the whaler gave them some seed-potatoes, and 

 they had a collection of the ordinary garden seeds. 



When they had been four days on the island they had a visit 

 from a party of men from Tristan, who had come on their an- 

 nual sealing excursion. They were ten days on Inaccessible, 

 and were very friendly in their intercourse with the new- 

 comers. They told them that the north side of the island was 

 better suited for a settlement, and transported all their goods 

 thither in one of their boats. Being familiar with the place, 

 they showed them generally their way about, and the different 

 passes by which tlie plateau might be reached from beneath, 

 and they taught them how to build to withstand the violent 

 winds, and how to thatch with tussock-grass. 



Immediately after they left, the brothers set about building 

 a house and clearing some ground for potatoes and other vege- 

 tables. They killed nineteen fur-seals, and prepared the skins, 

 but they were unable to make any quantity of oil. Toward 

 the end of the sealing season their boat got damaged in the 



