268 



GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



three months of hardship all reached land (Timor, three 

 thousand six hundred miles from where they started) safely, 

 and were taken back to England. The British Government 

 sent out a warship to punish the mutineers and part of them 

 were captured on Tahiti. But their leader and nine other 

 sailors had already escaped to Pitcairn Island in company 

 with eighteen natives, six men and twelve women. Their 

 place of refuge remained a secret for twenty years, when it 

 was accidentally discovered by an American sealing ship 

 which visited the island in 1808. Pitcairn Island is the 

 southernmost island of the Low Archipelago in latitude 25° 

 S. and longitude 180° W. It is about two miles long and one 

 mile wide, and consists of a mountain surrounded by coral 

 reefs. For ten years after the landing of the refugees, dis- 

 order and lawlessness prevailed. In 1808 the sole survivors 

 were one Englishman by the name of John Adams (formerly 

 Alexander Smith), eight or nine women, and several children. 

 It is related that the elements of disorder being removed 

 Adams instilled ideas of morality and religion into the others, 

 with the result that the settlement prospered. In 1815 when 

 the ship Britain visited the island, the captain was impressed 

 with the peace and good order prevailing. In 1839 the island 

 became a British dependency. In 1855 the number of in- 

 habitants had increased to two hundred and the island was 

 becoming too small for them. They therefore petitioned the 

 British government to be removed to Norfolk Island, which 

 was done the following year. Since then some of them have 

 returned to Pitcairn Island whose present population is about 

 one hundred and twenty-five. The population of Norfolk 

 Island in 1901 was eight hundred and seventy, mostly 

 descendants of the Pitcairn Islanders. 



Here then on these two islands is a race of probably one 

 thousand persons at the present time, originated more than 

 a century ago by a cross between English men and women of 

 Tahiti. The experiment has gone far beyond the Fi genera- 

 tion and would afford unique material for a study of the 

 effects of race-crosses uncomplicated by race-antipathies. So 



