122 OCCUPATIONS. 
delighted with the simplicity, and ' yet elegant 
taste, of these untaught females. 7 
" Their native modesty, assisted Iby a proper 
sense of religion and morality, instilled into 
their youthful minds by John Adams, had 
hitherto preserved these interesting people pure 
and uncorrupted. 
" They all labour, while young, in the culti- 
vation of the ground ; arid when possessed of a 
sufficient quantity of cleared land, and of stock 
to maintain a family, they are allowed to marry, 
but always with the consent of Adams. 
" The greatest harmony prevailed in this 
little society ; their only quarrels, (and these 
rarely happened) being, according to their own 
expression, quarrels of the mouth. They are 
honest in their dealings, which consist of barter- 
ing different articles for mutual accommodation. 
" Their habitations are extremely neat. The 
little village of Pitcairn forms a pretty square, 
the houses at the upper end of which are occu- 
pied by the patriarch John Adams and his 
family, consisting of his old blind wife and 
three daughters, from fifteen to eighteen years 
of age, and a boy of eleven ; a daughter of his 
wife by a former husband, and a son-in-law. 
On the opposite side is the dwelling of Thursday 
October Christian, and in the centre is a smooth 
verdant lawn, on which the poultry are let loose, 
fenced in so as to prevent the intrusion of the 
domestic quadrupeds. All that was done, was 
obviously undertaken on a settled plan, unlike 
to anything to be met with on the other islands. 
In their houses they had a good deal of decent 
