ers came to examine the houses more closely, they were
particularly struck with the neatness with which they were constructed
and the extreme labour that must have been expended on them.

Apart from the difficulty of procuring wood, which they could only get
from stray whaling ships, the islanders are obliged to build their
dwellings of stone, in order to prevent their being demolished by the
fierce and frequent hurricanes that assail the isolated little spot,
exposed as it is to all the rude blustering blasts that career over the
expanse of the Atlantic. The cottages are, therefore, put together with
a dark-brown, soft sort of stone, which is hewn out in great blocks from
the cliffs above the settlement and afterwards shaped with great
accuracy and care with the axe. Many of these masses of stone are
upwards of a ton in weight; but, still, they are cut so as to lock into
one another in a double row to form the main wall, which is some
eighteen inches thick, with smaller pieces of stone, selected with equal
care as to their fitting, placed in between. There is no lime on the
island, so that the blocks are put together on the cyclopean plan,
without cement. They are also raised into their places in the same
primitive fashion, strong spars being used for inclined planes, up which
these monoliths are pushed by manual labour in a similar way to that
described in the old hieroglyphics of the Nineveh marbles. With all
these precautions as to strength, however, the sou'-westers blow with
such fierceness into the little bay where the colony is situated, that
many of these massive buildings, Green said, were constantly blown down,
the huge blocks being tumbled about like pieces of cork!

The roofs were thatched with the long grass that Fritz had seen growing
in the gardens and with which he had later on a closer and more painful
acquaintance, the tussock fibres being fastened inside to light poles
that were attached to rafters placed horizontally, while the ridges
outside were covered with bands of green turf, firmly fixed on.

As for the colony, which numbered some eighty souls in all, it consisted
of fifteen families, who possessed from five to six hundred head of
cattle and about an equal supply of sheep, with lots of pigs and
poultry, each family having its own stock in the same way that each
cultivated its own garden; but, there was a common grazing ground, where
also large quantities of potatoes were raised--the trad