STOBY OF TEE BBOTHEBS STOLTENEOFF . 97 
With this view, after making preparations, we left South- 
ampton for St. Helena in the English steamer Northam, in 
August 1871, and were landed there the following month. 
On the 6th November we left St. Helena in an American 
whaler, the Java, Capter Manter, hailing from New Bedford, 
bound on a cruise in the South Atlantic. We shipped as 
passengers, and were to have been landed at Tristan. During 
the passage across, the captain’s account of the settlers at 
the island, and the probable reception we should meet with 
from them, was in direct opposition to my brother’s de- 
scription of the place and people, after a stay of eighteen 
days only. Captain Manter described Inaccessible Island as 
a fertile place with a valley running up from the beach on 
the west side; and that the island itself and the next 
(Nightingale) were the seats of a seal and sea-elephant 
fishery. His knowledge was derived, so he said, from 
several visits to Inaccessible Island, where he had landed 
and seen both pigs and goats. Eventually my brother and I 
decided to try our fortunes at Inaccessible Island, and we 
were landed there by the whaler’s boats on 27th November 
1871. We had with us a whale boat (old), bought at 
St. Helena, with mast, sail, and oars, two hundred pounds of 
rice, two hundred pounds of flour, one hundred pounds of 
biscuit, twenty pounds of coffee, ten pounds of tea, thirty 
pounds of sugar, one barrel of coarse salt (afterwards washed 
away), thirty pounds of block salt, and a small quantity of 
pepper, eight pounds of tobacco, fourteen empty barrels for 
oil, five bottles of hollands/ six bottles of Cape wine, six 
bottles of vinegar, some Epsom salts (the only medicine). 
We each had two blankets, some shoes and boots, and our 
ordinary clothes. The captain of the whaler sold us a lantern 
and a bottle of oil; but we had no candles. For lighting 
purposes we had six dozen boxes of Bryant and May’s 
matches. We also had a wheelbarrow, two spades, a shovel, 
two pickaxes, kettle, frying-pan, two saucepans, and eating 
