We had brought fifteen bags of letter and parcel mail from England for these islanders; we had on board also a large number of packages and cases which Macklin, who had been compelled to find room for them in the sorely restricted space at his disposal, was pleased at the prospect of being able to hand over. They included a large gramophone, a gift from the Æolian Company, and some Bovril sent by the firm as a present to the islanders. As I was anxious to learn all I could about these people, their ways and customs and mode of life generally, I detailed Macklin to go ashore for this purpose. I also gave him instructions to take a complete census, which might be of use to the Cape Government. He remained there while the ship visited Nightingale and Inaccessible Islands, and as I have asked him to write his own account, to avoid repetition I will refrain from any further description of Tristan da Cunha itself. The Tristan da Cunha group of islands includes the three just mentioned and two smaller islets known as Middle and Stoltenhoff respectively. They lie roughly in latitude 37 south and 12 west longitude, and they are approximately 4,000 miles from the Cape of Good Hope. Tristan is probably the most isolated inhabited island in the world. The group was discovered by the Portuguese admiral whose name they bear, in 1506. The Dutch, at the time of their settlement in the Cape Colony, examined it with a view to making it a naval station. The East India Company also sent a ship to see if it would be worth while forming a settlement there. No one lived there, however, till early in the eighteenth century, when a man named Thomas Currie landed and decided to remain. He was joined by two American whalers, named Lambert and Williams respectively. There is a vague report, too, of a Spanish boy having somehow or other joined the party. Lambert and Williams were drowned whilst making a visit to Inaccessible Island. What happened to the other is not clear. The history of the present settlement is dealt with in the following chapter. A British naval officer, named Nightingale, visited the group in 1760, and the crew of a sealing vessel, under command of John Patten, spent six months about the islands, collecting the skins of fur seals. The first accurate survey was made by the hydrographic staff of the _Challenger_, which in the course of her historic voyage round the world spent a short time here in 1873. All hands having been recalled from the shore, we left Tristan da Cunha at 7.30 P.M. on May 20th and proceeded in the direction of Inaccessible Island, which loomed up in the dark ahead of us about midnight. We reduced speed, waiting till daylight should give us a chance to see what we were doing. I took with me on the _Quest_ three of the inhabitants of Tristan da Cunha to act as pilots and guides about the islands. They were Bob Glass, his brother John Glass, and Henry Green.