A USTRALASIA ILL USTRA TED. 



ship and sunk her guns, so that no trace might remain, and Pitcairn Island was colonized. 

 Christian divided the hitherto uninhabited island into nine parts, which he apportioned 

 among the Europeans present. For some time the settlement went on peaceably, until 

 one of the mutineers, named Williams, whose wife had been killed by a fall from a cliff, 

 attempted to possess himself of the wife of an Otaheitan. His comrades protested against 

 this step, but Williams threatened to leave the Island if they interfered, and as he was 

 a skillful workman, having been armourer to the ship, they soon gave up their opposition. 

 Thereupon the Otaheitans formed a plot, which is said to have resulted in the murder 



% 



of Christian and Williams, and three of their companions. They then proceeded to quarrel 

 among themselves, so that in a short time all the males were killed, leaving Pitcairn 

 in the undisputed possession of four of the mutineers and the Otaheitan women. One of 

 the former succeeded in distilling a spirit from the ti-tree, which grew on the Island. 

 He lapsed into a continual state of inebriety, and presently fell over a cliff and was 

 killed. A companion who had taken to the same evil courses was destroyed by the two 

 survivors, Young and Adams, in 1799. Young had been a midshipman on the Bonn I \, 

 and Adams an able seaman, who had taught himself to read and write from printed 

 papers picked up in the streets of London, in which city his father had been a lighter-man. 

 Among the disused articles taken from the old ship were a Bible, and a prayer-book' of the 

 English Church. Adams applied himself to the reading of these, and under the influence of 

 his studies, it is said, he soon began to see visions and to dream dreams. He collected 

 the children of the Island, to the number of nineteen, and proceeded to teach them the 



Christian truths. He 

 taught the community 

 to read, the Bible being 

 the lesson-book ; and 

 under the new influence 

 thus introduced, life on 

 the Island underwent 

 a radical change. Pub- 

 lic worship was estab- 

 lished, after the form 

 of the English Church ; 

 the Sunday was ob- 

 served ; the tone of 

 morals was raised, and 

 order and some sem- 

 blance of social law made their appearance in the little community, so that when the 

 Island was once more brought into touch with the outer world by the successive 

 visits of the Topaz, the Jlritain and the Tagits, in 1808 and 1814, it was found that the 

 survivors of the old mutineers had succeeded in establishing a community as idyllic 

 and virtuous as any in the Arcadian age. Mr. Young died in 1800, and from that 

 time Adams became the patriarch and ruler of the settlement. 



After the dates named, vessels touched repeatedly at Pitcairn Island, and the outer 

 world learnt with interest of the singular experiment of which it had been the scene. 









THE PRAYER-BOOK USED liY JOHN ADAMS. 





