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They har'e on the island a few strong spars, mostly
the masts of Avrecked vessels, and to get the great
blocks np to the top of the Avail after it has risen
to a certain height, they use a long incline, made
of a couple of these spars, well greased, up which
they sloAvly drag and shove the blocks, much as
they are represented as doing in old times in some
of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Tlie furniture of
the rooms is scanty, OAA'ing to the difficulty of
procuring A v o o d ; but passing ships seem to furnish
F ig. 35.—Cyclopenn a rchitecture, T ristan Island. (From a plioiograpji.)
enough of woven fabrics to supply bedding, and
in the better cottages some little drapeiy, and to
enable the people, and particularly the AVomen, to
dress in a comfortable and seemly style. Loav stone
Avails partition the land round the cottages into
small enclosures, Avhich are cultivated as gardens,
and Avhere all the ordinary European vegetables
thrive fairly. There is no fruit of any kind on
the island. The largest cultivated tra c t is on the
flat, about half a mile from ‘ Edinburgh.’ There
B A H I A TO TH E CAFE. 63
the greater part of the potatoes are grown, and the
cattle and sheep have their head-quarters. The
goods of the colonists are in no sense in common ;
each has his own property in land and in stock.
A new-comer receives a grant of a certain extent
of land, and he gets some grazing rights, and the
rest of the settlers assist him in fencing his patch,
and in working it and preparing it for a first crop.
They then contribute the necessary cattle, sheep,
potato-seed, &c., to start him ; contributions which
he no doubt repays when he is in a position to do
so, under some definite understanding, for the Tristan
Islanders have a very practical knowledge of the
value of things. There seems to he a harmonious
arrangement among them for assisting one another
in their work, such assistance heing repaid either
in kind or in produce or money. The community
is under no regular system of laws, everything appears
to go hy a kind of general understanding. When
difficulties occur they are referred to Green, and
perhaps to others, and are settled by the general
sense. This system is probably another great source
of the apparently exceptional morality of the place ;
m so small a community Avliere all are so entirely
interdependent, no misconduct aifecting the interests
of others can he tolerated or easily concealed, and
as there is no special machinery for the detection
and punishment of offences, the final remedy lies
in the hands of the men themselves, who are most
of them young and stalwart and well able to keep
unruliness in check.
The island of Tristan is almost circular, about
seven miles in diameter. The position of Herald
M 2