THE BREADFRUIT AND ITS RELATIVES 409 



as a majority of their principal food-producing plants were 

 propagated by cuttings alone, the difficulty in successfully 

 carrying them across a wide expanse of ocean in open boats is 

 obvious." 



Spanish voyagers who visited the Solomon Islands in the 

 sixteenth century encountered the breadfruit, and it is believed 

 that it must also have been seen by the early Dutch and Portu- 

 guese sailors. In 1686 Captain William Dampier observed 

 the plant at Guam and gave to the world an accurate descrip- 

 tion of the fruit and its uses. The famous Captain Cook, who 

 explored the Pacific from 1768 until he met his death in the 

 Sandwich Islands in 1779, is said to have suggested to the 

 British the desirability of introducing the tree into the West 

 Indies. The outcome was that notorious voyage under W T illiam 

 Bligh, in the Bounty, which forms certainly the most dramatic 

 incident in the history of plant introduction. The expedi- 

 tion sailed from England in 1787, and reached Tahiti, after a 

 cruise of ten months, in 1788. A thousand breadfruit plants 

 were obtained and placed on board ship in pots and tubs which 

 had been provided for the purpose. Before the ship was out 

 of the South Seas the crew, who had become enchanted with 

 Tahitian life, mutinied and took charge of the ship, putting 

 their commander and the eighteen men who remained loyal 

 to him in a launch and setting them adrift. The mutinous 

 crew sailed back to Tahiti, whence some of the members, 

 accompanied by a number of Tahitians, migrated to Pitcairn's 

 Island and established there an Utopian colony. After a trying 

 voyage Bligh and his companions reached Tofoa, an island in 

 the Tonga group, but they met with a hostile reception from 

 the natives and were forced to continue their desperate pilgrim- 

 age. Fearing, because of their defenseless condition, to land 

 on the Oceanic islands, they steered for the distant East Indies, 

 which they were successful in reaching. " It appeared scarcely 

 credible to ourselves," remarks Captain Bligh in his account 



