& 



18 JOHN READE ON 



century against the inexhaustible forces of G-reat Britain." In like manner raaj the popinée, 

 he thinks, prove the mainstay of France in the Pacific. 



There is no more romantic and extraordinary instance of a new hnman variety starting 

 into life and, in spite of deplorable beginnings, 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 isolated islet. By feuds of race the colony was reduced in four 

 years to four white and ten Tahitian women. A few years later, Adams, the pious patriarch 

 of the coramunitv, 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 popu.- 

 lation of the island was eighty-seven. Some of them were then transferred, 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 distasteful 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 1878, 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 McCav, steersman of the island whaleboat, of which he was also the biiilder. 

 The law of the laud 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 recrea- 

 tion 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 Baily Telegi-nph. 



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

 composed of English, French or Spanish, blended with some coloured race. The Portuguese, 

 like their neo-Latin kinsmen, have ever been known to mingle their blood with that of 

 aliens in all parts of the world. In Brazil, on this Continent, they are largely represented 

 in combination with both the Indian and the negro, while instances are not wanting in 

 which the blood of the three is blended in various proportions. In Africa, the same people 

 has mixed with the natives of both the east and west coasts. In Asia, though none of their 

 colonies are large, compared with those of England, their position was one of influence 

 before the stream of exploration had drawn other nationalities eastward. The Malay word, 

 Mandarin, so associated in our minds with the despotic system of the extreme Orient, 

 was one of the prizes of early Portuguese exploration, and it is one of several terms and 

 phrases which the daring countrymen of Camoeus have, by origination or adaptation, 

 caused to pass current in tlie whole world of commerce and diplomacy. EA^en in lands 

 where their influence has waned, the A'estiges of their former power remain in the lan- 

 guage of the people. On landing at Batavia in the autumn of 18Y8, Mr. H. O. Forbes 

 heard, here and there amid the Babel of foreign tongues that assailed his ears, " a Portu- 

 guese word still recognizable, even after the changes of many centuries, veritable fossils 

 imbedded in the language of a race, where now no recollection or knowledge of the pi^oples 

 Avho left them exists." And at a later date, while visiting the shops and offices of Dilley, 

 in Timor, he was astonished " to find all business conducted, not as in the Dutch pos- 



