general admiration. His body was much tanned by exposure to the weather; but although his complexion was somewhat brown, it wanted that tinge of red peculiar to the natives of the Pacific. He spoke English correctly both in grammar and pronunciation; and his frank and ingenuous deportment excited in every one the liveliest feelings of compassion and interest. His companion was a fine handsome youth, of seventeen or eighteen years of age, named George Young, son of one of the Bounty's midshipmen.

The youths expressed great surprise at everything they saw, especially a cow, which they supposed to be either a huge goat or a horned sow, having never seen any other quadrupeds. When questioned concerning the Bounty, they referred the captains to an old man on shore, the only surviving Englishman, whose name, they said, was John Adams, but who proved to be the identical Alexander Smith before-mentioned, having changed his name from some caprice or other. The officers went ashore with the youths, and were received by old Adams (as we shall now call him), who conducted them to his house, and treated them to an elegant repast of eggs, fowl, yams, plantains, breadfruit, &c. They now learned from him an account of the fate of his companions, who, with himself, preferred accompanying Christian in the Bounty to remaining at Otaheite-which account agreed with that he afterwards gave at greater length to Captain Beechey in 1828. Our limits will not permit us to detail all the interesting particulars at length, as we could have wished, but they are in substance as follows:

It was Christian's object, in order to avoid the vengeance of the British law, to proceed to some unknown and uninhabited island, and the Marquesas islands were first fixed upon. But Christian, on reading Captain Cartaret's account of Pitcairn's Island, thought it better adapted for the purpose, and shaped his course thither. Having landed and traversed it, they found it everyway suitable to their wishes, possessing water, wood, a good soil, and some fruits. Having ascertained all this, they returned on board, and having landed their hogs, goats, and poultry, and gutted the ship of everything that could be useful to them, they set fire to her, and destroyed every vestige that might lead to the discovery of their retreat. This was on the 23d of January 1790. The island was then divided into nine equal portions amongst them, a suitable spot of neutral ground being reserved for a village. The poor Otaheitans now found themselves reduced to the condition of mere slaves; but they patiently submitted, and everything went on peaceably for two years. About that time Williams, one of the seamen, having the misfortune to lose his wife, forcibly took the wife of one of the Otaheitans, which, together with their continued ill-usage, so exasperated the latter, that they formed a plan for murdering the whole of their oppressors. The plot, however, was discovered,

and revealed by the Englishmen's wives, and two of the Otaheitans were put to death. But the surviving natives soon afterwards matured a more successful conspiracy, and in one day murdered five of the Englishmen, including Christian. Adams and Young were spared at the intercession of their wives, and the remaining two, M'Koy and Quintal (two desperate ruffians), escaped to the mountains, whence, however, they soon rejoined their companions. But the farther career of these two villains was short. M'Koy, having been bred up in a Scottish distillery, succeeded in extracting a bottle of ardent spirits from the tee root; from which time he and Quintal were never sober, until the former became delirious, and committed suicide by jumping over a cliff. Quintal being likewise almost insane with drinking, made repeated attempts to murder Adams and Young, until they were absolutely compelled, for their own safety, to put him to death, which they did by felling him with a hatchet.

their own

Adams and Young were at length the only surviving males who had landed on the island, and being both of a serious turn of mind, and having time for reflection and repentance, they became extremely devout. Having saved a Bible and prayer-book from the Bounty, they now performed family worship morning and evening, and addressed themselves to training up children and those of their unfortunate companions in piety and virtue. Young, however, was soon carried off by an asthmatic complaint, and Adams was thus left to continue his pious labours alone. At the time Captains Staines and Pipon visited the island, this interesting little colony consisted of about forty-six persons, mostly grown-up young people, all living in harmony and happiness together; and not only professing, but fully understanding and practising, the precepts and principles of the Christian religion. Adams had instituted the ceremony of marriage, and he assured his visitors that not one instance of debauchery and immoral conduct had occurred amongst them.

The visitors having supplied these interesting people with some tools, kettles, and other articles, took their leave. The account which they transmitted home of this newly-discovered colony was, strange to say, as little attended to by government as that of Captain Folger, and nothing more was heard of Adams and his family for nearly twelve years, when, in 1825, Captain Beechey, in the Blossom, bound on a voyage of discovery to Beering Strait, touched at Pitcairn's Island. On the approach of the Blossom, a boat came off under all sail towards the ship, containing old Adams and ten of the young men of the island. After requesting and obtaining leave to come on board, the young men sprung up the side, and shook every officer cordially by the hand. Adams, who was grown very corpulent, followed more leisurely. He was dressed in a sailor's shirt and trousers, with a low-crowned hat, which he held in his hand in sailor fashion, while he smoothed down his bald forehead when ad

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dressed by the officers of the Blossom. The little colony had now increased to about sixty-six, including an English sailor of the name of John Buffet, who, at his own earnest desire, had been left by a whaler. In this man the society luckily found an able and willing schoolmaster. He instructed the children in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and devoutly co-operated with old Adams in affording religious instruction to the community. The officers of the Blossom went ashore, and were entertained with a sumptuous repast at young Christian's, the table being spread with plates, knives, and forks. Buffet said grace in an emphatic manner; and so strict were they in this respect, that it was not deemed proper to touch a morsel of bread without saying grace both before and after it. The officers slept in the house all night, their bedclothing and sheets consisting of the native cloth made of the native mulberry-tree. The only interruption to their repose was the melody of the evening hymn, which was chanted together by the whole family after the lights were put out; and they were awakened at early dawn by the same devotional ceremony. On Sabbath the utmost decorum was attended to, and the day was passed in regular religious observances.

In consequence of a representation made by Captain Beechey, the British government sent out Captain Waldegrave in 1830, in the Seringapatam, with a supply of sailors' blue jackets and trousers, flannels, stockings and shoes, women's dresses, spades, mattocks, shovels, pickaxes, trowels, rakes, &c. He found their community increased to about seventy-nine, all exhibiting the same unsophisticated and amiable characteristics as we have before described. Other two Englishmen had settled amongst them; one of them, called Nobbs, a low-bred, illiterate man, a self-constituted missionary, who was endeavouring to supersede Buffet in his office of religious instructor. The patriarch Adams, it was found, had died in March 1829, aged sixty-five. While on his deathbed, he had called the heads of families together, and urged upon them to elect a chief; which, however, they had not yet done; but the greatest harmony still prevailed amongst them, notwithstanding Nobbs' exertions to form a party of his own. Captain Waldegrave thought that the island, which is about four miles square, might be able to support a thousand persons, upon reaching which number they would naturally emigrate to other islands.

Such is the account of this most singular colony, originating in crime and bloodshed. Of all the repentant criminals on record, the most interesting perhaps is John Adams; nor do we know where to find a more beautiful example of the value of early instruction than in the history of this man, who, having run the full career of nearly all kinds of vice, was checked by an interval of leisurely reflection, and the sense of new duties awakened by the power of natural affections.

AMES HOGG, more familiarly known as the ETTRICK SHEPHERD, was born on the 25th of January 1772, in a cottage on the banks of the small river Ettrick, a tributary of the Tweed, in Selkirkshire, one of the most mountainous and picturesque districts in the south of Scotland. He was the descendant of a race long settled as shepherds in the same region. Robert Hogg and Margaret Laidlaw, his parents, had four sons, of whom James was the second, and all of whom were trained to the pastoral life;

the father having been elevated above the condition of a shepherd only for a short time, to return to it with the loss of all his earnings. This unfortunate event happened when James Hogg was but in his sixth year, and, accordingly, all his authentic recollections of early life have reference to the sheiling on the farm of Ettrick House, where his father settled after his misfortunes, having received the charge of a flock of sheep from the tenant of that farm, Mr Brydon of Crosslee.

Like many other men who have signalised themselves, Hogg appears to have been more indebted to his mother than his father for the fosterage, if not possession, of those talents which he displayed. "His mother, Margaret Laidlaw," says a memoir of him in the Edinburgh Magazine, "was a self-taught genius. Her mother had died while she was yet young; but being the eldest of several children, and her father far from wealthy, she was kept at home to superintend the household affairs, and assist in bringing up her younger brothers and sisters during those years when the children of the Scottish peasantry, even the poorest, are sent to school; and they at the proper age enjoyed the usual advantages. About the age of twelve or thirteen, she began to feel her inferiority to them; and on the Sabbath, her only day of rest, she used to wander out alone to a solitary hill side, with a Bible under her arm, and, humbled by a sense of her ignorance, to throw herself down on the heath, and water the page with bitter tears. By the ardour of her zeal she soon accomplished the object of her dearest wishes, and supplied the No. 123.

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deficiencies of her education. The race of wandering minstrels was not then extinct in her native glens; and from the recitations of one of them, an old man of ninety, she stored her memory with many thousand lines of the old Border ballad, which he alone knew. To his knowledge she succeeded; and there is reason to fear that much of it died with her.

"This woman, herself of an imaginative and enthusiastic mind, soon discovered in her son James a kindred spirit, and laboured in its cultivation with an earnestness greatly honourable to her, and to which, perhaps, the world is indebted for the 'Queen's Wake.' In the remote and solitary glens of these mountain districts, the cottages of the shepherds are often situated at great distances from other dwellings, and their tenants pass the winter months with no other society than that of their own family. Nothing can be conceived humbler in the way of human habitations than these cottages then were; yet they were frequently lighted by a brilliancy of imagination, and cheered by a gentleness of affection, and an enthusiasm of feeling, that Grecian sofas and gilded canopies cannot confer. In a sequestered mode of life, where the affections are limited in their range, they acquire a strength greater in proportion as the sphere of their action is narrowed; and imagination is most vigorous when it has to work on a small number of simple ideas. Never was a family more closely linked together than the children of this admirable woman; and never was a mind of great original power more strenuously exerted in the formation of the heart and the development of the understanding. She was in the daily habit of reading to them from the sacred volume such passages as she thought most likely to interest their minds and improve their moral feelings; and this she diversified by animated recitations from the Border ballad, something between chant and song, bringing also tales of superstition to her aid; or thrilling their hearts with the account of the death of some young shepherd who had perished not far from his own dwelling amid the mountain snows.'

After a brief attendance at school, James was, at seven years of age, sent into the world to earn his own livelihood in the humble capacity of attendant on a few cows. The farmer who hired him for this employment gave him, in requital for his services, besides food and lodging, a ewe lamb and a pair of new shoes. Fluttering in rags, he returned to the parental hearth in the ensuing winter, and again received a little instruction in reading; he also tried writing, but did not get beyond scrawling in a large text hand. This terminated his school education, the whole having not extended over six months, or cost more than two or three shillings. On the return of spring, he was sent away to his former occupation of herding cows; and in this he was engaged for several years under various masters, till at length he rose to the more honourable one of keeping sheep.

The profession of a shepherd among the mountains of Selkirk