tions of lunacy, gravely asking if the Cape was not bad enough? whether I thought Tristan d'Acunha could be much worse? if I really wanted something worse, why I did not make my way to Kamschatka? with sundry other equally facetious inquiries.

I felt convinced that the facts had but to be brought prominently before the public of the Cape, however, to secure a sufficient sum to enable Brody to charter a brig, and to stock it as he had been ordered before quitting the island. I called on the editor of more than one paper -myself an editor, I needed no other introduction. The power of the fourth estate was brought to bear upon the public benevolence. Moving appeals were addressed to the benevolent sympathy of a generous public, even from the editorial columns. The disappointment of the poor islanders-fifteen hundred miles away from any inhabited land—was feelingly dwelt upon; their heavy loss, and the years of toil which it would require before another vessel could be purchased by them; the misfortune of the brave master and crew, who had lost their all-these topics, and others equally suitable, were duly urged.

In the midst of political disquisitions on the policy of receiving convicts, and violent diatribes against the Home Government for wishing to force convicts upon the colony-in the midst of editorial squabbles and party perorations, these appeals to the public formed an agreeable resting-place, the neutral tint that harmonizes the strong lights, the pause in the action of the heroic poem that allows the anxious reader time to breathe freely.

The public was not deaf to the voice of their monitors. Engaged in a contest of no ordinary moment, though they were resolutely determined that their beef and their bread should not supply English convict ships and their guards, heroically disdaining present gains for future purity and freedom from contamination, they yet listened to the details of the poor islanders. Sympathy was excited. Money began to flow in. Great names headed the lists; the names of doughty knights and colonial honourables, each of which was a host in itself. In a fortnight, Mr. Brody was negotiating for a brig, the Osprey, then waiting for a commission. In a month his purchases were made; Messrs. Roggeweld and Stallenbosch, the agents of

the islanders, supplied him with all that he demanded, and there was still a balance to the credit of the charitable fund-a small balance, it is true, but still it must be remembered that money enough had been subscribed to charter the vessel for a run to Tristan d'Acunha and back, to purchase all that the islanders wanted, and to replace the clothes and personal property of the master and crew.

True, the schooner and its freight were gone -heavy losses for the poor islanders-but a large portion of that freight was represented by the goods taken out by the Osprey. A heavy loss instead of partial ruin. All honour, then, to the benevolent Capeofgoodhopians!* They were in this case honest followers of the Good Samaritan.

* What name is to be given to the dwellers at the Cape? They would disdain that of Africans; Capites is unpleasant, Capeofgoodhopians too long. The same may be said of Vandiemanslandonians, but they get out of the difficulty by calling themselves Tasmanians.

• CHAPTER IX.

THE LIVING CRUSOES.

I TOOK my passage in the Osprey, bound for Glass Bay, in Tristan d'Acunha, Mr. Brody commander. Before I land, it will perhaps be well to give the reader some further information respecting the group of three islands called generally after the Portuguese admiral who discovered them in 1506, and of which the largest (not fifteen miles in circumference, as the Edinburgh Gazetteer affirmed, but nineteen or twenty miles) bears his name particularly. If the reader will but open a map of the world, and draw his finger westerly from the Cape, a little southerly too, but very little, he will come upon the group of three islands, which Tristan d'Acunha, the celebrated Por

tuguese admiral, discovered when he was sailing to the East to assume "the Viceroyalty of

the Indies."

It is not often that vessels doubling the Cape go so far south as these islands; they do not therefore lie in the ordinary track of Indiamen, or else Corporal Glass and his little colony would be as well known to readers of Indian travels as Mrs. Glass of cooking celebrity to all readers. Besides the largest island called after the discoverer, there are two others, Nightingale and Inaccessible Island, both much smaller, with high bleak shores and forbidding rocky beaches. These islands can only be approached by boats or small vessels in a perfect calm-the landing is dangerous even then. Had they both been called Inaccessible, the name would not have been much of a misnomer. A few swine and goats have been put by the colonists upon both of them, and now live luxuriously there, nothing to do but eat, drink, multiply, and replenish the earth, their great enemy, man, seldom seen, perhaps never, by many of them.

Tristan d'Acunha, the largest of the three, is of somewhat peculiar construction. A moun