Commander Wild had asked me to take a census of the island, and this I proceeded to do, visiting the houses in turn. There was considerable vagueness about ages, and in many cases about names also. On more than one occasion a man (it was always the stupid male sex) did not seem clear about his own name, sometimes contradicting himself or appealing to bystanders for confirmation. As may be gathered from the history of the settlement, with comparatively few exceptions everyone on the island is either a Glass, Green, Swaine or Rogers. Consequently, individuals are better known by Christian names than by surnames, which probably accounts for their vagueness. It is rather remarkable that with so few names amongst them the new chaplain should be a Rogers. The history of Tristan da Cunha is interesting. The island was discovered in 1506 by a Portuguese navigator, Tristão da Cunha, from whom it takes its name, and though individuals on different occasions lived on it for short periods at a time, for three hundred years it remained nobody’s property. It was formally annexed by Great Britain in 1816, and a garrison, consisting of about one hundred men, placed there, with the object of resisting any attempt by foreign Powers to use it as a base of operations for the rescue of Napoleon from St. Helena. The garrison remained for a year only. Corporal Glass, of the Royal Artillery, a native of Kelso, in Scotland, asked for, and received, permission to stay. He had married a coloured woman from Cape Colony, and had at the time two children. It was no doubt the possession of this black wife that chiefly influenced his decision. He was joined by Alexander Cotton and Thomas Swaine, two members of the relief ship. This little party was augmented by some shipwrecked American whalers, but none of them remained long, the only names persisting to-day of the original settlers being Glass, Swaine and Cotton. Some twenty years later Pieter William Green, a Dutchman, was wrecked on Inaccessible Island, and having made his way to Tristan da Cunha, elected to remain. About the middle of the century two American whalers, Rogers and Hagan, also settled there, and more recently, within the present generation, two Italian sailors, Andreas Repetto and Gaetano Lavarello, survivors cast upon the shores from the wreck of the sailing ship _Italia_, were so determined never again to risk their lives upon the ocean that they also threw in their lot with the islanders and stayed.