THE INTERMINGLING OF RACES. 347 



nations. And in North America, too, it was by allying themselves 

 with the willing daughters of the Abenakis that the sons of France 

 created that vigorous Acadian stock whose patriotic spirit has more 

 than once kept at bay the proud rulers of Old and New England. 

 ' What a pity,' said the Indians after the capitulation of Quebec, ' that 

 the French were conquered ! Their young men used to marry our 

 daughters.' Those mixed marriages gave us faithful allies, and enabled 

 our colonists, abandoned by the mother-country, to make head for a 

 century against the inexhaustible forces of Great Britain." * In like 

 manner may the popin&e, he thinks, prove the main-stay of France in 

 the Pacific. 



There is no more romantic and extraordinary instance of a new 

 human variety starting into life, and, in spite of deplorable begin- 

 nings, taking on the better characteristics of the wild and the civilized 

 race, than that of the Pitcairn-Islanders. The story is well known, 

 and I need, scarcely repeat it. It may suffice to say that, after the 

 tragedy of the Bounty, the refugee mutineers, nine English sailors, 

 accompanied by six men and fifteen women of Tahiti, settled on that 

 little secluded islet. By feuds of race the colony was reduced in four 

 years to four white men and ten Tahitian women. A few years later, 

 Adams, the pious patriarch of the community, was the sole survivor 

 of the repentant mutineers. But, meanwhile, children had been born, 

 who grew up and married and had families, and in 1830 the popula- 

 tion of the island was eighty-seven. Some of them were then trans- 

 ferred, at their own desire, to Otaheite, but they had been religiously 

 trained, and the loose morals prevalent there disgusted them. So most 

 of them returned home within the year. In 1856 a second experiment 

 at emigration was made, Pitcairn proving too small to support the 

 rapidly growing population. But Norfolk Island was nearly as dis- 

 tasteful to the half-breeds as Otaheite had been, and in a few years 

 they had almost all come back. "When Admiral de Horsey visited the 

 colony in 18T8, he found sixteen men, nineteen women, twenty-five 

 boys, and thirty girls — in about sixteen families. At that time the 

 elected governor was James Russell McCay, steersman of the island 

 whale-boat, of which he was also the builder. The law of the land 

 was the simple, but morally rigorous, code drawn up by Adams. The 

 colony, as the admiral described it, was a community of contented, 

 friendly, gentle, pious people, poor but happy, strict in attending to 

 their religious duties, and taking their recreation mainly in the form 

 of music, most of them being good singers. A later visit to Pitcairn 

 of an English vessel was some time ago described in the London 

 "Daily Telegraph." 



The communities of half-breeds to which I have been directing 

 attention are mainly composed of English, French, or Spanish, blended 



* I would like to know where M. Joppicourt obtained his information concerning the 

 frequency of mixed marriages in Canada under the old regime. 



