1282 



. / f :v TK. //- /.S7. / ILL I 'STR. \ 77:7'. 



quantity of rum and wine. A quadrant and a compass were given them, but no other 

 instruments, according to Bligh's account ; while it is alleged, on behalf of the mutineers. 

 that Christian handed into the long-boat a sextant and a book of nautical tables. The 

 launch was veered astern by a rope, and, " after having undergone a great deal of ridicule, 

 and been kept for some time to make sport for the unfeeling wretches," says Bligh, the 

 adventurers were cast adrift. Hligh 

 and his eighteen companions voy- 

 aged three thousand five hundred 

 miles in their brave craft, landing 

 at Timor, where they were found 

 later on by H.M.S. Pandora. Dif- 

 ferent causes have been assigned 

 for this extraordinary mutiny; Hligh 

 ascribing it to the allurements of 

 savage life at Otaheite, while the 

 mutineers, through their leader, 

 Christian, gave as their reason the 

 continuous ill treatment to which 

 they had been subjected on the 

 voyage. Christian took command 

 of the Bounty, and steered for the 

 island of Toubouai, lying in twenty 

 degrees thirteen minutes south lati- 

 tude, and one hundred and forty- 

 nine degrees thirty-five minutes 

 west longitude. Before landing he 

 revisited Otaheite and procured 

 some live stock, and returning 

 to Toubouai, made a settlement 



there. Quarrels with the natives soon made it desirable to seek another place of 

 refuge. Returning to Otaheite, sixteen of the mutineers elected to go ashore, while 

 Christian and eight others, with twenty Otaheitan natives, men and women, took leave of 

 their friends and sailed away. Those who remained were discovered, in 1791, by the 

 Pandora, taken to England, and there tried by court-martial, three being hanged at the 

 yard-arm of a vessel in His Majesty's fleet in Portsmouth Harbour for their share in the 

 memorable mutiny. The Bounty left Otaheite for the last time on the 23rd of September, 

 1789. There was a book on board telling how Captain Carteret, in the sloop Sisal low, 

 had sighted a small island in latitude twenty-five degrees four minutes south, and longitude 

 one hundred and thirty degrees twenty-four minutes west, about one thousand two hundred 

 miles south-east of Otaheite. ' Carteret named the island after a midshipman named 

 Pitcairn, who sighted the spot on the horizon, from the mast-head, on the 2nd of July, 

 1767. Towards this island Christian determined to steer. The search occupied several 

 weeks, owing to an error in Carteret's record; but in October, 1789, this speck in the 

 vast Pacific was descried, and the mutineers once more disembarked. Thev burnt their 





JOHN ADAMS. 



