Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

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,

(who had, on first entering the service, assumed the name of Alexander Smith,) related that after putting Bligh into the boat, Christian, with the other mutineers, had gone to Tahiti, where all hands remained but Christian, Smith, and seven others; that each had taken a Tahitian wife, and then proceeded to Pitcairn, where they had made good a landing, and afterward broken up the Bounty.

This brings our readers to Pitcairn's Island. Some of them may desire to learn the origin of its name, and the circumstances of its first discovery by British navigators.

Captain Philip Carteret, in his description of a voyage round the world, wrote as follows, July, 1767:

"We continued our course westward till the evening of Thursday, the 2d of July, when we discovered land to the northward of us. Upon approaching it the next day, it appeared like a great rock rising out of the sea. It was not more than five miles in circumference, and seemed to be uninhabited. It was, however,

[ocr errors]

covered with trees; and we saw a small stream of fresh water running down one side of it. I would have landed upon it, but the surf, which at this season broke upon it with great violence, rendered it impossible. I got soundings on the west. side of it, at somewhat less than a mile from the shore, in twenty-five fathoms, with a bottom of coral and sand; and it is probable that in fine summer weather, landing here may not only be practicable, but easy. We saw a great number of seabirds hovering about it, at somewhat less than a mile from the shore; and the sea here seemed to have fish. It is so high that we saw it at the distance of more than fifteen leagues; and it having been discovered by a young gentleman, son to Major Pitcairn, of the marines, we called it PITCAIRN'S ISLAND. This young man was unfortunately lost in the Aurora.*

"While we were in the neighbourhood of this island, the weather was extremely

*His father, Major Pitcairn, was killed early in the war of the American Revolution.

Bounty Bay Village of Pitcairn.-p. 139.

[ocr errors][ocr errors][graphic][subsumed]
« ForrigeFortsæt »