[Illustration: HENRY GREEN’S COTTAGE, TRISTAN DA CUNHA The Union Jack was presented by the British Government to the Islanders for bravery in saving lives from shipwreck _Photo: Dr. Macklin_] [Illustration: THE OLDEST INHABITANT OF TRISTAN DA CUNHA, MISS BETTY COTTON (AGED 95 YEARS) _Photo: Wilkins_] Frequently it happens that a couple do not become married until after a child has been born; often a considerable period elapses. They are not, however, “marriages of necessity.” A young man in Tristan da Cunha is very peculiarly placed. There are no jobs or trades or form of employment in the ordinary sense. There is no currency. If any individual wants help, his neighbours give him a hand, during which time he is expected to feed them. A young man, therefore, can acquire nothing except as a gift from his parents. In many ways it may not suit his parents to allow him to marry, for it means, first of all, another family on the island drawing a full share of common goods. It means also the loss of an adult worker. Again, they may not be in a position to spare him anything in the way of household goods, and, if he has not already built a house, it means a wife and any family he may have quartered upon them. So the young couple use compulsion, for with the advent of the child the parents think it is time to make a move, and present the pair with a cow, a sheep or two, and a few household necessities to enable them to make a start. Until the formal marriage takes place, the child takes its mother’s name, and so it occasionally happens that a bewildered tot of three or four years of age suddenly finds one day that, instead of being Tommy Green, its name has become Tommy Swaine, or vice versa, as the case may be. Promiscuity is not common and morals, on the whole, appear to be remarkably good, though to the casual observer the reverse might seem to be the case. The remarks in “Sailing Directions” seem to me to cast an unfair stigma upon the islanders. In some ways they are very casual. Appointments are rarely kept punctually, and they are apt to put things off for another day. In the hours of rising and going to bed they are governed by the sun. The only form of artificial illumination known to them is candle-light, and frequently they have no candles. They have, as a rule, three meals a day, which they take at times convenient on any one day. The men seek to avoid going out to work in wet weather, but at times—for instance, in the potato season—they fare forth before dawn so as to be ready for work the moment daylight appears, and do not return till dusk. On these occasions it is the duty of the womenfolk to take them out their meals.