94 HISTORIC MUTINEERS. 



was not until 1814 that their whereabouts were 

 discovered. 



Sir Thomas Staines gives an account of the 

 little colony founded by Christian and his band. 



" On my passage from the Marquesas Islands," 

 he says, " I fell in with an island where none is 

 laid down in the Admiralty or other charts. . . . 

 I hove to until daylight, and then closed to ascer- 

 tain if it was inhabited, which I soon discovered 

 it to be, and, to my great astonishment, found 

 that every individual on the island (forty in 

 number ) spoke very good English. They proved 

 to be the descendants of the deluded crew of 

 the Bounty, who, from Otaheite, proceeded to 

 the above-mentioned island, where the ship was 

 burned. 



" Christian appears to have been the leader 

 and sole cause of the mutiny of that ship. A 

 venerable old man, named John Adams, is the 

 only surviving Englishman of those who quitted 

 Otaheite in her, and whose exemplary conduct 

 and fatherly care of the whole of the little colony 

 could not but command admiration. The pious 

 manner in which all those born on the island 

 have been reared, the correct sense of religion 

 which has been instilled into their young minds 

 by this old man, has given him the pre-eminence 



