I.

We heard a curious story at Tristan[2] about two Germans who had settled nearly two years before on Inaccessible Island[3]. Once a year, about the month _of_ December, the Tristan men go[4] to the two outlying islands to pick up the few seals which are still to be found there. On two of these occasions they had seen the Germans, and within a few months smoke had risen from the island, which they attributed[5] to their having fired (S. 161, N. 21) some of the brushwood; but as they had seen or heard nothing of them since, they thought the probability was that they had perished. Captain Nares[6] wished to visit the other islands, and to ascertain the fate of the two men was an additional object in doing so[7].

Next morning we were close under Inaccessible Island, the second in size of the little group of three. The ship was surrounded by multitudes of penguins[8], and as few of us had any previous personal acquaintance with this eccentric form of life[9], we followed their movements with great interest. The penguin as a rule swims under water, rising now and then and resting on the surface, like one of the ordinary water-birds, but more frequently with its body entirely covered, and only lifting its head from time to time to breathe.

The structure of Inaccessible Island is very much the same as Tristan, only the pre-eminent feature[10] of the latter, the snowy cone, is wanting. A wall of volcanic rocks, about the same height as the cliff at Tristan, and which one is inclined to believe to have been at one time continuous with it, entirely surrounds Inaccessible Island, falling for the most part sheer[11] into the sea, and it seems that it slopes sufficiently to allow a tolerably easy ascent to the plateau on the top at one point only.

[1] This story is taken from Mr. W. J. J. Spry’s most interesting account of ‘The Cruise of the Challenger’. The Tristan d’Acunha group of islands (+die Erfrischungsinseln+), so named from the Portuguese navigator who discovered it early in the 16th century, lies in mid-ocean, about 1300 miles south of St. Helena and 1500 miles west of the Cape of Good Hope, nearly on a line between the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn; it is thus probably the most isolated and remote of all the abodes of men. The group consists of the larger Island of Tristan and two smaller islands—Inaccessible Island, about 18 miles south-west from Tristan, and Nightingale Island, twenty miles south of the main island. Tristan only is permanently inhabited, the other two are visited from time to time by sealers. In the year 1829 Tristan was inhabited by 27 families; in 1836 it possessed a population of 42; in 1852 the population had risen to 85, and in 1867 this number was only exceeded by one.

[2] +Auf der Insel Tristan+, which place at the head of the period; about, +über+, with Acc.

[3] The author finds that the best German maps use the English name of ‘Inaccessible Island’ unaltered. This is also the case with ‘Nightingale Island’.

[4] +fahren+; =‘to go’, when used in the sense of ‘travelling, riding (in a carriage), driving, sailing, etc.’, is mostly rendered by +reisen+ (generally used for greater distances) or by +fahren+. When used in the sense of ‘riding on horseback,’ it is rendered by +reiten+.=

[5] = which they attributed to the circumstance.

[6] Captain Nares was the commander of ‘The Challenger’ at that time.

[7] and — so = and as he was anxious (+begierig+) to ascertain (+erforschen+) the fate of the two men, the voyage [there, +dahin+] was at once determined upon.

[8] +der Pinguin+, pl. e.

[9] with — life, +mit dieser eigentümlichen Vogelart+.

[10] = the characteristic peculiarity.

[11] = straight.

_Section 234._

A CURIOUS STORY.