PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
85 
through our intercourse with these excellent people, that they had no CHAP, 
wants excepting such as had been created by an intercourse with 
vessels, which have from time to time supplied them with European Dec. 
articles. Nature has been extremely bountiful to them ; and necessity 
has taught them how to apply her gifts to their own particular uses. 
Still they have before them the prospect of an increasing population, 
with limited means of supporting it. Almost every part of the island 
capable of cultivation has been turned to account ; but what would 
have been the consequences of this increase, had not an accident disco- 
vered their situation, it is not difficult to foresee ; and a reflecting mind 
will naturally trace in that disclosure the benign interference of the 
same hand which has raised such a virtuous colony from so guilty a 
stock. Adams having contemplated the situation which the islanders 
would have been reduced to, begged, at our first interview, that 1 
would communicate with the government upon the subject, which was 
done ; and I am happy to say that, through the interference of die 
Admiralty and Colonial Office, means have been taken for removing 
them to any place they may choose for themselves ; and a liberal supply 
Df useful articles has recently been sent to them. 
Some books of travels which were left from time to time on the 
island, and the accounts they had heard of foreign countries from their 
visiters, has created in the islanders a strong desire to leave it. I’he 
idea of passing all their days upon an island only two miles long, 
without seeing any thing of the world, or, what was a stronger aigu- 
ment, without doing any good in it, had with several of them been 
deeply considered. But family ties, and an ardent affection for each 
other, and for their native soil, had always interposed to prevent their 
going away singly. George Adams, however, having no wife to detain 
iiim, but, on the contrary, reasons for wishing to employ his thoughts 
on subjects foreign to his home, was very anxious to embark in the 
Blossom ; and I would have acceded to his wishes, had not his mother 
wept bitterly at the idea of parting from him, and imposed terms 
touching his return to the island to which I could not accede. It 
was a sore disappointment to poor George, whose case forms a striking 
