tagu was paid off at Chatham, on the 16th July, 1816; and he came ashore, after having been actively employed at sea twenty-seven years, out of a service in the navy of twenty-nine years.

On the 18th May, 1818, Lord Melville, without any solicitation, made him the offer of the command, with a commodore's broad pendant, on the lakes in Canada. A considerable salary was annexed to this important office; but as he had married in 1816, and there was no war requiring his active exertions for the benefit of his country, Captain Heywood, with Lord Melville's permission, declined the prof fered honour; and he afterward found his chief happiness in the bosom of his family. His career of activity being now at an end in an honourable profession, which had acknowledged and appreciated a life of useful labour, his early afflictions, the sufferings of body and soul, began to tell upon his constitution. It is thought, that during the period of his imprisonment, the seeds were sown of that disorder (a complaint

of the heart) which terminated his existence.

This valuable and excellent officer died in London on the 10th February, 1831, in his fifty-eighth year, and was buried in -a vault at Highgate Chapel.

There is not room in these pages for an enumeration of his professional services; but Lieut. Marshall, in his Naval Biography, supplies the deficiency by the following passage, written in 1825, respecting him: "The misfortunes of his youth proved highly beneficial to him. The greater part of those distinguished officers. who had sat as members of the courtmartial, justly considering him much more unfortunate than criminal, extended their patronage to him immediately after his release; and through their good offices, and his own meritorious behaviour, he was subsequently advanced, step by step, to the rank he at present holds. The duties which have fallen to his share he has ever performed with a zeal not inferior to that of any other officer in the service. The young men who have had the honour of

serving under him, many of whom now enjoy commissions, will readily and gratefully acknowledge, that, both by precept, and his own example, he invariably endeavoured to form their characters, as men and officers, in the solid principles of religion and virtue. In short, we do not hesitate to say, that his king and country never had a more faithful servant, nor the naval service a more worthy and respectable member."

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CHRISTIAN AND HIS PARTY. 135

CHAPTER IV.

CHRISTIAN AND HIS PARTY-PITCAIRN'S ISLAND-FOLGER'S
ACCOUNT-LANDING OF NINE MUTINEERS AND OTHERS AT
PITCAIRN-DREADFUL DEATHS OF CHRISTIAN AND OTHERS
-INTOLERABLE STATE OF SOCIETY AT PITCAIRN-INTEM-

PERANCE-RETRIBUTION FROM GOD.

TWENTY years had passed away, and the Bounty and Fletcher Christian, and the piratical crew that he had carried off with him in that ship, had long ceased to Occupy a thought in the public mind. Throughout the whole of that eventful period, the attention of all Europe had been absorbed in the contemplation of enterprises of great moment-of the revolutions of empires-the bustle and business of warlike preparations-the movements of hostile armies, and battles by sea and land. If the subject of the Bounty was accidentally mentioned, it was merely to express an opinion that this vessel and

those within her had gone down to the bottom, or that some savage islanders had inflicted on the mutineers that measure of retribution so justly due to their crime. It happened, however, some years before the conclusion of this war of unexampled duration, that an accidental discovery, as interesting as it was wholly unexpected, was brought to light in consequence of an American trading vessel having approached one of those numerous islands in the Pacific against whose steep and iron-bound shore the surf almost everlastingly rolls with such tremendous violence as to bid defiance to any attempt of boats to land, except at particular times and in very few places.

In the year 1809, Sir Sidney Smith, commander-in-chief on the Brazil station, informed the Admiralty that Captain Folger, of the ship Topaz, of Boston, on landing at Pitcairn's Island, in 1808, had found an Englishman named Alexander Smith, the only person remaining of nine that had found their way thither in the Bounty. Smith, otherwise John Adams,