An echo to the prolonged salute which the ships of Sir George Collier fired, in the harbor of Porto Praya, to the honor of Yankee pluck and seamanship, comes from a giant mountain rising in the lonely wastes of the South Atlantic--from the island of Tristan d’Acunha. On a line from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Horn, and 1,500 miles west of the Cape of Good Hope, can be found three rugged islands, which, though small in diameter, rise at one point to a height of no less than 8,300 feet above the rollers that crash against their precipitous walls. No more lonely and no more impressive rocks than these are found in all the world. But, though far away from civilized habitations, the group was itself inhabited by sealers and whalers even as early as 1791, when a Yankee, one Jonathan Lambert, “by a curious and singular edict declared himself sovereign proprietor” of the group. For it was a breeding resort for seals and sea lions, and it had also a climate and some soil fit for a comfortable human habitation, and this enterprising Yankee had settled there with associates and had “cleared about fifty acres of land, and planted various kinds of seed, some of which, as well as the coffee-tree and sugar-cane, were furnished by the American Minister at Rio Janeiro.” At the time of the War of 1812 it was a very well-known group to Yankee seamen, and seemingly out of the way as it looked when glancing at a chart of that sea, it was nevertheless but a little to one side of what was counted the best route from New York to the East Indies. Accordingly, when Decatur was ordered to take the _President_, the _Hornet_, the new _Peacock_, and the store-ship _Tom Bowline_ for a voyage against British commerce in the East Indies, he appointed the Tristan d’Acunha group as the rendezvous where all the ships should meet, replenish their water, stretch the legs of the seamen in a chase after wild goats and hogs on shore, and then sail away in search of English men-of-war to conquer. As has been told, Decatur, when leaving New York, took the natural course along the Long Island coast, instead of the bolder and therefore safer course down the Jersey beach, and “was fairly mobbed” by the British fleet. His consorts, the _Hornet_, the _Peacock_, and the _Tom Bowline_, sailed a few days later (January 22d), without having learned that the _President_ was captured, and having escaped the blockaders, they sailed away to the meeting-point.