The American captain also stated that the amount of sea animals of all kinds on the island--whales, seals, and penguins--was almost inexhaustible, his party having procured over six thousand sealskins during their stay of seven months, besides killing more whales than they could find room for the oil from them in their ship! This, too, had become altered during the years which had elapsed, the seals getting scarcer at Tristan now, through the wholesale war carried on against them by the islanders, who latterly, with the exception of the visits they paid to Inaccessible Island and Nightingale Islet--according to old Green's account--had almost abandoned the pursuit for sheer want of sport.
The next mention of Tristan d'Acunha, as related in the printed chronicle Fritz read, was in the year after the American captain's sojourn there, when two British ships of war, the _Lion_ and _Hindostan_, which were probably East Indiamen, with the English embassy to China on board, anchored off the north side of the island under the cliff of the mountain peak; but, a sudden squall coming on, these vessels had to leave without investigating the place thoroughly, although their commanders described it as being uninhabited at that time.
Nine years later, the captain of another ship that called there found three Americans settled on the island, preparing sealskins and boiling down oil.

Goats and pigs had been set adrift by some of the earlier visitors, as well as vegetables planted, and these colonists appeared to be in a very flourishing condition, declaring themselves perfectly contented to pass their lives there.

One of the men, indeed, had drawn up a proclamation, stating that he was the king of the country, a title which the others acknowledged; and the three, the monarch and his two subjects, had cleared about fifty acres of land, which they had sown with various things, including coffee-trees and sugar-canes; but, whether this plantation turned out unsuccessful, or from some other notion, the "king" and his colleagues abandoned the settlement--the place remaining deserted until the year 1817, when, during Napoleon Buonaparte's captivity at Saint Helena, the island was formally taken possession of by the English Government, a guard of soldiers being especially drafted thither for its protection, selected from the Cape of Good Hope garrison.
This was, undoubtedly, the foundation of the present colony; for, although the military picket was withdrawn in the following year, a corporal of artillery with his wife and two brother soldiers, who expressed a desire to remain on the island, stayed behind.

Since then, Tristan has always been inhabited--the original little colony of four souls having formed the nucleus of the present settlement of over eighty, men joining it at various times from passing whalers, while women were imported from the Cape when wives were wanted.

From the fact of these latter being mostly Hottentots, the complexion of the younger men, Fritz noticed, was somewhat darker than that of Europeans.