Uncle Sam likes to do the civil, the same as other men-o'-war when they goes to foreign ports!" These orders were obeyed; and no sooner were the "Stars and Stripes" run up to the masthead and the report of the little gun on the topgallant fo'c's'le heard reverberating through the distant mountain tops--the sound of the discharge being caught up and echoed between the narrow arms of the bay--than a smart whale-boat, pulled by eight men and with a white-bearded, venerable-looking individual seated in the stern-sheets, was seen coming out from the very spot which Fritz had determined to be the landing-place.
They were soon alongside the _Pilot's Bride_; when the old man--who introduced himself as Green, the oldest inhabitant of the island and with whom Captain Brown had already had an acquaintance of some years' duration--cordially invited Fritz to land, the skipper having explained that he wished to see the place and hear all about it.

He told the brothers aside, however, that perhaps they'd better not mention their intention of settling on Inaccessible Island, for the inhabitants of Tristan, who sent expeditions every year on sealing excursions there, might not like to hear this news.
While on their way to the shore with the old man and four of the islanders--the other Tristaners remaining on board the ship to select certain articles they required from her stores and arrange for the barter of fresh meat and potatoes with Captain Brown in exchange--Fritz observed that, some distance out from the land, there was a sort of natural breakwater, composed of the long, flat leaves of a giant species of seaweed which grew up from the bottom, where its roots extended to the depth of fifteen fathoms.

This, old Green pointed out, prevented the rollers, when the wind was from the westward, from breaking too violently on the shore, between which and the floating weed was a belt of calm water, as undisturbed as the surface of a mountain tarn.
The landing-place was of fine black sand, showing the volcanic character of the mountain peak above, which Green said was over eight thousand feet high and had an extinct crater on the top; and, when Fritz and his brother had jumped out of the boat, they proceeded up to the little settlement of the islanders, which was called "Edinburgh" out of compliment to his Royal Highness Prince Alfred, who had visited the place when cruising in HMS _Galatea_, just four years before their landing.
The village consisted of some dozen cottages or so, roughly built of square blocks of hewn stone dovetailed into each other, without mortar, and thatched with tussock-grass.

The houses were scattered about, each in its own little garden, enclosed by walls of loosely piled stones about four feet high; but, as it was now the early spring of Tristan, these had very little growing in them.

One of the enclosures, Fritz noticed, had a lot of marigolds in flower, another, several dwarf strawberry plants just budding, while a third was filled with young onions; but the majority displayed only the same coarse, long tussock- grass with which the cottages were thatched.
When the brothers came to examine the houses more closely, they were particularly struck with the neatness with which they were constructed and the extreme labour that must have been expended on them.
Apart from the difficulty of procuring wood, which they could only get from stray whaling ships, the islanders are obliged to build their dwellings of stone, in order to prevent their being demolished by the fierce and frequent hurricanes that assail the isolated little spot, exposed as it is to all the rude blustering blasts that career over the expanse of the Atlantic.