78 
VOYAGE TO THE 
may safely add, that the Pitcairn’s Islanders would have been the last 
persons to incur the charge. 
We assembled at breakfast about noon, the usual eating hour of 
the natives, though they do not confine themselves to that period 
exactly, but take their meal whenever it is sufficiently cooked ; and after- 
guards availed ourselves of their proffered services to show us the island, 
and under their guidance first inspected the village, and what lay in its 
immediate vicinity. In an adjoining house we found two young girls 
seated upon the ground, employed in the laborious exercise of beating 
out the bark of the cloth-tree, which they intended to present to us, on 
our departure, as a keepsake. The hamlet consisted of five cottages, 
built more substantially than neatly, upon a cleared patch of ground, 
sloping to the northward, from the high land of the interior to the 
cliffs which overhang the sea, of which the houses command a distant 
view in a northern direction. In the N. E. quarter, the horizon may 
also be seen peeping between the stems of the lofty palms, whose grace- 
ful branches nod like ostrich plumes to the I’efreshing trade-wind. To 
the northward, and north-westward, thicker groves of palm-trees rise 
in an impenetrable wood, from two ravines which traverse the hills in 
various directions to their summit. Above the one, to the westward 
a lofty mountain rears its head, and toward the sea terminates in a 
fearful precipice filled with caverns, in which the different sea-fowl find 
an undisturbed retreat. Immediately round the village are the small 
enclosures for fattening pigs, goats, and poultry; and beyond them, 
the cultivated grounds producing the banana, plantain, melon, yam, 
taro, sweet potatoes, appai, tee, and cloth plant, with other useful roots, 
fruits, and shrubs, which extend far up the mountain and to the south- 
ward; but in this particular direction they are excluded from the view 
by an immense banyan tree, two hundred paces in circumference, whose 
foliage and branches form of themselves a canopy impervious to the 
rays of the sun. Every cottage has its out-house for making cloth, its 
baking-place, its sty, and its poultry-house. 
Within the enclosure of palm-trees is the cemetery where the few 
persons who had died on the island, together w ith those who met with 
violent deaths, are deposited. Besides the houses above mentioned. 
