Three Years in Tristan da Cunha | Page 6

a gale the rooms below are thick with dust. Perhaps the dust is also caused by the innumerable wood-lice which work in the wood and make a fine wood-dust. Every house has a loft running the whole length of it. We found ours the greatest boon as it was the only place we had in which to keep the year's stores. The woodwork of nearly all the houses is from wrecked ships; boards from the decks form the flooring, masts and yards appear as beams, cabin doors give entrance to the rooms.
The houses when I first went into them struck me as most dreary; no fire, hardly any furniture, just a bare table, a wooden sofa which is nearly always used as a bed, a bench, and perhaps a chair, with a seaman's chest against the wall, a chimney-piece covered with a pinked newspaper hanging, on which stood pieces of crockery, on the walls a few pictures and ancient photographs. There are large open fire-places, but no grates or stoves, the cooking being done on two iron bars supported by fixed stones.
The rooms are divided off by wooden partitions. There are generally two bedrooms; the end one is also nearly always used as a kitchen, and the groceries are usually kept there. On account of the high winds there are generally windows only on the north of the house, which is the sunny side, due to Tristan's being south of the equator.
Every house has a garden, but not used to grow vegetables or flowers, which the people do not seem to care about, and certainly there are difficulties owing to high winds, rats, fowls, and, not least, children. They sometimes grow a few onions, cabbages and generally pumpkins: a few pink roses and geraniums may be seen. Potatoes are their staple food, and are grown in walled-in patches about three miles off. Each house has one or two huts, in one of which they stow away their potatoes, and also a lamb-house.
In the matter of clothing, the men have not much difficulty, as they barter with the sailors on passing ships, giving in exchange the skins of albatross and mollyhawks, the polished horns of oxen, small calf-skin bags and penguin mats made by the women, and occasionally wild-cat skins. They usually wear blue dungaree on week-days, and broadcloth or white duck on Sundays. With the women and children it is different, for they depend on parcels sent by friends, and as of late years there has been no regular communication with the island they have been at times very short, especially of underclothing. Now that whalers have begun to call again, two or three appearing about Christmas time, they can sometimes get material from them, but, except the dungaree, it is very poor stuff, and they have to pay a high price in exchange. The women usually have a very neat appearance, no hole is allowed to remain in a garment, which is at once patched, and many and varied are the patches. They wear blouses which they call jackets, and in the place of hats, coloured handkerchiefs (occasionally procured from ships), which are worn all day, from morning to night, and only taken off on very hot days, or when they are going to be photographed, when as a rule no amount of persuasion will induce them to keep them on. The little girls wear sun-bonnets, "capies" they call them, and very well they look in them. The little boys wear short jackets and long knickers. The women and girls card and spin their own wool, which they knit into socks and stockings.
As regards food, potatoes take the place of bread. There are about twenty acres under cultivation, each man having his own patches. They never change the seed and rarely the ground. A man may enclose as many patches as he likes provided he cultivates them. They used to manure their ground with seaweed, but found its constant use made the ground hard; then they tried guano, and finally sheep manure, which they use in large quantities. They get it by driving their sheep during the lambing season four or five times a week into the lamb-houses, penning them up from about five in the afternoon until eight or nine next morning. The poor sheep must suffer considerably both from being driven so much and because they get no food while penned in. In spite of this barbarous practice the mutton when we first went was very good--equal, we thought, to the best Welsh mutton, but latterly its quality much fell off, and we found the sheep were largely infected with scab. The people occasionally have beef in the winter. Their method of killing the ox is very cruel, for often the poor animal is chased about over