INSULAR AUSTRALASIA. 



1287 



souls. Some returned in 1858 and 1863, and the descendants of the old mutineers of tin- 

 last century now occupy both Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands, in much peace and simplicity. 

 Norfolk Island lies in latitude twenty-nine degrees fifty seconds south, and longitude 

 one hundred and sixty-seven degrees fifty-seven minutes east, and was discovered by 

 Captain Cook in 1773. It is about twenty miles in circumference, with an average 

 breadth of five or six, and is elevated one thousand and thirty-nine feet above the sea- 

 level. The Island has had a dismal history. Chosen, at an early period in the mother- 

 colony's history, as a place of confinement for desperate felons, it was there, as in a 

 conservatory, of crime, that the iniquitous penal system of the early days brought its 



LANDING THROUGH THE SURK AT NORFOLK ISLAND. 



flowerage and ultimate fruit to the rankest extreme of development. The first colonizing 

 party reached there under Lieutenant King, in March, 1788, and in 1790 that official 

 was relieved by Lieutenant-Governor Ross, until his return in the following year. In 

 1805 the Island was abandoned, the inhabitants removing to Van Diemen's Land ; but 

 in 1826 it was again constituted a convict settlement. From this time, until the penal 

 system was finally broken up, the story of Norfolk Island forms the darkest chapter in 

 Australasian history. Its aspect now differs strangely from that presented by the Island 

 while a penal settlement. The old prison buildings still stand, and easily strike the 

 visitor's eye on landing, but otherwise all is changed. 



Leaving the settlement of Kingston on the left, after following a road winding up 

 among the hills for about a mile and a half, the pedestrian finds himself at the 

 beginning of a magnificent avenue of pine trees, straight as an arrow and about a mile 



