4 8 
FROM BERMUDAS TO CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. 
their destined places without mortar or any binding material whatever. A wall, several feet 
thick and built after this fashion, shelters the hut on the weather side. 
The group of Tristan d’Acunha includes Inaccessible Island, situated about twenty 
nautical miles to the south-west of the former, and Nightingale Island, about eleven miles 
to the south-east of the latter. The position of these islands being but vaguely marked in 
the charts, it was intended, weather permitting, to make a survey. We had learned from the 
men at Edinburgh that two Germans were living on Inaccessible Island, but had not been 
communicated with for many months. So we started off in the afternoon of the 15th, and 
early next morning found ourselves close to the island. The two solitary dwellers had no 
doubt sighted the ship long before our arrival, and had lighted a fire to attract our attention. 
They proved to be two brothers, named Frederick and Gustav Stoltenhoff. The elder 
brother, Frederick, had served as second lieutenant in the Franco-German war, and had taken 
part in the siege of Metz and Thionville ; the younger, an ex-pupil of the German Seamen s 
School at Hamburg, had landed in 1870 on Tristan d’Acunha with the crew of a ship lost 
by fire about three hundred miles to the north-west, and during his stay had heard of 
the capture of 1700 seals at Nightingale Island in 1869. Upon his return to Europe he 
persuaded his brother to join him in a seal-hunting expedition, in the hope of realising a 
handsome sum by the venture. Having heard a favourable report of Inaccessible Island, 
they decided upon trying their fortunes there, and, shipping on board an American whaler, 
were landed at their destination in Novem¬ 
ber, 1871. Their stock-in-trade consisted of 
an old whale-boat bought at St. Helena, a 
few guns, some tools and ammunition, and a 
stock of provisions. The speculation turned 
out a complete failure, owing to a series of 
unforeseen disasters. Shortly after landing, 
the boat, which was too heavy for two men 
to handle, came to grief in the surf. They 
only succeeded in killing about a score of 
seals during the first season. In April, 
1872, the tussock grass, by which they had 
been enabled to ascend the cliff close to the 
hut which they had built, caught fire, and 
thus their means of killing goats and wild 
pigs, chief articles of food, was cut off. With 
the exception of a few visits from passing vessels and from the settlers of Tristan d’Acunha 
—whose treatment of them, by-the-bye, seems to have been anything but generous—the 
brothers were wholly dependent on themselves for the means of existence, and were 
occasionally reduced to the brink of starvation. 
In order to ascend the cliff, 1200 feet high, after the burning of the grass, they were 
HUT OF THE BROTHERS STOLTENHOFF ON INACCESSIBLE ISLAND. 
