LIFE AT TRISTAN D'ACUNHA.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1142, 6 May 1885, Page 3

LIFE AT TRISTAN D'ACUNHA.

The ship Dunedin fully maintained her reputation for making fast passages on her last trips from and to New Zealand. She made the run home from Oamaru in eighty days, . and only took two days longer in returning to the Colony. The best day's run during the voyage amounted to 327 miles. Nearly every outward trip Captain Whitson calls at Tristan d'Acunha, if the weather is favorable, at it makes a very agreeable break in the monotony of a long voyage for the passengers. Captain Whitson informs us that the island ! is ' run on purely communistic principles'; al).. the stores obtained from ships being put down on a large sheet of paper, and when taken on shore are divided according to the number in each family. In return-for stores vessels obtain sheep, potatoes,vegetables, milk, and eggs, as well as curios. Captain Whitson says the islanders appear happy and contented with their solitary life in mid-ocean. He remarked that one old Yorkshireman, between fifty and sixty years of age, generally makes the bargains with the vessels on behalf of the islanders. The trip before this one Captain Whitson asked " Yorky" if he would not like to come to New Zealand in the vessel 5 to which "Yorky" replied that he would like very much, but he had a wife and i eleven children on the island, and they were rather too many to shift. He was asked how he came to be stranded there, and his answer was that he met his wife at the Cape of Good Hope, and after the first two children were born she took a hankering to revisit the island, and of course, as is usual when the ladies want their own way, " Yorky " had to go with her. Captain Whitson informed us that about half the inhabitants are -total abstainers, while the other ''half "only use alcohol moderately. " Yorky " was asked by the Captain if he would take something, and he did. He was asked, too, whether he ever got drunk, and he replied he did whenever he got the opportunity, which, happily for him, was but seldom, as it is only from passing vessels that they can obtain any liquor. The islanders have not yet, it appears, learned the way to manufacture potheen for themselves. I was astonished, Captain Whitson says, to find how many of the islanders wanted a bottle of port wine for their, wives who were approaching childbed . One of the islanders went to a cabin passenger and asked him for a silk handkerchief to wrap his first-born in, and he got it. The young men belonging to the island generally go away' • with the American whalers which call there^turing the season, and the young womdh'gd to service at the Cape, but usually they return to their island home. .The, young men and women when they wish to beebme united, get married in their own fashion, and the chaplain of the first manibf-war that calls there ratifies the ceremony.

" The twttight dues are falliug,*;»rHtes a poet. Poor fellow, his creditor* mu«t be importunate to make him sing so ungrammatically.