266 Voyage of the Novara. 



for years cut off from any communication with the outer 

 world, and every corner of which has already been cultivated 

 to the utmost : would it not be a paj^-donable anxiety, which 

 in view of such circumstances should fill with gloomy fore- 

 bodings the heart of every prudent head of a family, and 

 make him hesitate between love for his native soil, and the 

 desire to preserve independence and comfort to his family ? 



A second attempt at acquiring a settlement beyond their 

 own confined limits was not more fortunate than the first. 

 The Government of England, with the meritorious care for 

 the interest of even the poorest of her subjects in the most 

 remote regions of the globe, which is one of her noblest cha- 

 racteristics, once more dispatched a ship of war to Pitcairn, 

 with orders to transport the inhabitants to Norfolk Island be- 

 tween New Zealand and New California, of the marvellous 

 climate, vegetation, and fertility of which the most glowing 

 accounts were in circulation. A few plants which had been 

 conveyed thence by English navigators to Europe had ex- 

 cited universal astonishment — such exquisite forms of vegeta- 

 tion, it was thought, could only form part of some landscape 

 of marvellous beauty and richness. And one must, in fact, 

 have seen the Araiicaria excelsa, the well-known Norfolk Is- 

 land j)ine, in order rightly to understand these raptures. 

 Sucli an island, it was thought, with an equable climate, 

 fertile, and of adequate extent, must be the very thing for the 

 idyllic life of such a people as the Pitcairn Islanders. Adams' 

 descendants and their kinsmen accordingly suffered them- 



