This, however, is very useful in one way here, as we found.  Wanting more supplies, which were to be had cheap, we lowered a couple of boats, and went ashore after them.  On approaching the black, pebbly beach which formed the only landing-place, it appeared as if getting ashore would be a task of no ordinary danger and difficulty.  The swell seemed to culminate as we neared the beach, lifting the boats at one moment high in air, and at the next lowering them into a green valley, from whence nothing could be seen but the surrounding watery summits.  Suddenly we entered the belt of kelp, which extended for perhaps a quarter of a mile seaward, and, lo! a transformation indeed.  Those loose, waving fronds of flexible weed, though swayed hither and thither by every ripple, were able to arrest the devastating rush of the gigantic swell, so that the task of landing, which had looked so terrible, was one of the easiest.  Once in among the kelp, although we could hardly use the oars, the water was quite smooth and tranquil.  The islanders collected on the beach, and guided us to the best spot for landing, the huge boulders, heaped in many places, being ugly impediments to a boat.

We were as warmly welcomed as if we had been old friends, and hospitable attentions were showered upon us from every side.  The people were noticeably well-behaved, and, although there was something Crusoe-like in their way of living, their manners and conversation were distinctly good.  A rude plenty was evident, there being no lack of good food—­fish, fowl, and vegetables.  The grassy plateau on which the village stands is a sort of shelf jutting out from the mountain-side, the mountain being really the whole island.  Steep roads were hewn out of the solid rock, leading, as we were told, to the cultivated terraces above.  These reached an elevation of about a thousand feet.  Above all towered the great, dominating peak, the summit lost in the clouds eight or nine thousand feet above.  The rock-hewn roads and cultivated land certainly gave the settlement an old-established appearance, which was not surprising seeing that it has been inhabited for more than a hundred years.  I shall always bear a grateful recollection of the place, because my host gave me what I had long been a stranger to—­a good, old-fashioned English dinner of roast beef and baked potatoes.  He apologized for having no plum-pudding to crown the feast.  “But, you see,” he said, “we kaint grow no corn hyar, and we’m clean run out ov flour; hev ter make out on taters ’s best we kin.”  I sincerely sympathized with him on the lack of bread-stuff among them, and wondered no longer at the avidity with which they had munched our flinty biscuits on first coming aboard.  His wife, a buxom, motherly woman of about fifty, of dark, olive complexion, but good features, was kindness itself; and their three youngest children, who were at home, could not, in spite of repeated warnings and threats, keep their eyes off me, as if