INACCESSIBLE ISLAND. 
49 
obliged first to swim round a point, and then the top was only reached after an hour and a 
half’s hard work with hands and feet, and, at times, teeth. To obtain a supply of provisions, 
one of them had to spend days and sometimes weeks on the summit of the island, where a 
hut and a cave afforded him shelter. When a pig was killed, the hide with the fat attached 
was rolled up and thrown over the cliff. The brothers saw each other almost every day, 
and were able, unless prevented by a high wind or the roar of the surf, to hold a sort of 
conversation. After a time their guns burst, and their knives were lost in the high grass, 
but they contrived to manufacture 
new knives from a saw by placing 
the latter in a fire, cutting off pieces 
with a chisel, hardening the iron, 
and fixing it in a handle. Happily 
they never required medicine; and 
they replaced worn boots and shoes 
by moccasins. They had fixed the 
hut—the second or third erection 
since their arrival — on the spot 
where we found them on account 
of a waterfall, which, descending 
close by from a height of many 
hundred feet, furnished an abundant 
supply of excellent water. Although 
for many months past the brothers 
had not seen a human being, and 
had been living chiefly on the eggs 
of penguins fried in pig’s fat, they 
looked none the worse for their 
long privations, and were only one 
day out in their reckoning, an error 
which, as they believed, occurred 
soon after their landing. They 
fortunately possessed a few books, interior of the hut of the brothers stoltenhoff. 
which, as may be imagined, we found in a well-thumbed condition. The interior of their 
abode afforded a good idea of the dwelling of a real Robinson Crusoe, and, truly, 
Inaccessible Island, with its precipitous cliffs and wandering goats, has some points of 
resemblance to Juan Fernandez, the whilom abode of Alexander Selkirk. The walls of the 
hut were built up of loose stones to a height of about four feet, and supported a slender 
framework of wooden beams covered in with dry grass. Standing at the little doorway we 
saw the roughly-constructed bedsteads, one on each side ; placed against the wall opposite, a 
trunk whose original covering of leather had been stripped to make shoes; stuck in the 
