ted from the Cape of
Good Hope garrison.

This was, undoubtedly, the foundation of the present colony; for,
although the military picket was withdrawn in the following year, a
corporal of artillery with his wife and two brother soldiers, who
expressed a desire to remain on the island, stayed behind. Since then,
Tristan has always been inhabited--the original little colony of four
souls having formed the nucleus of the present settlement of over
eighty, men joining it at various times from passing whalers, while
women were imported from the Cape when wives were wanted. From the fact
of these latter being mostly Hottentots, the complexion of the younger
men, Fritz noticed, was somewhat darker than that of Europeans. This
explained what the skipper meant, on first telling him about the island,
when he said the inhabitants were "mulattoes"; although Fritz thought
them only of a brunette tinge, for they were of much lighter hue than
many Spaniards and Italians whom he had met on the Continent.

Glass, the ex-artilleryman and original founder of the English
settlement, was a Scotchman, born at Kelso. He seems to have been a man
of great principle and energy, these qualities gaining for him the
complete confidence of the little community over which his authority was
quite of a patriarchal character. For thirty-seven years he maintained
his position as leader, representing the colony in all its transactions
with passing ships and showing himself just and honest in his dealings.
The islanders had always been English-speaking, and having strong
British sympathies, "Governor Glass," as he was styled, received
permission from one of the naval officers visiting the island to hoist
the red ensign, as a signal to vessels going by. This slight official
recognition was all the notice that the settlement has received from
England ever since its establishment--that is, beyond the sending out of
a chaplain there by the "Religious Tract Society," who remained for five
years and when leaving spoke of the members of the little settlement as
being so highly moral that they did not require any spiritual
ministration, "there not being a vice in the colony to contend with!"

To this latter statement, Fritz found the skipper had appended an
eccentric footnote:-- "'Cos why, there ain't no rum handier than the
Cape, the little to be got from the whalers visiting the spot--an' they
have little enough from me, you bet!--being speedily guzzled