PITCAIRN'S ISLAND.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 94, 23 October 1852, Page 8

PITCAIRN'S ISLAND.

[Concluded from oar last.] With regard to inheritance, property is equally divided among all the children ; a necessary rule, where there is no outlet for younger sons, or any possible means of their becoming the architects of their own fortunes. Yet the custom of gavel-kirid has its disadvantages even here; for besides the complicated sub-division of property, and the scattering of patches which it has already led to. it follows that tliose whose progenitors have deserved best of the state are left worst off in worldly gear. But the Pitcairn people go a step further than even the men of Kent, for the son comes into his inheritance, or the greater part of it, on his wedding day ; the bride contributes her dowry ; so that the young couple are at once placed in a state of independence. But the woman brings likewise a better portion than broad acres, or shekels of tested gold, -which are of little account beside the other good gifts which she throws into the matrimonial scale— Non ill am mihi dueo dotem esse qua dos dicitur, Sed pndorem, et pudicitiam, et sedatum cupidinem. They boast, and I believe with truth, that not a single faux pas has ever yet occurred. Their constitution is as simple as their code. In IS3B, Captain Russell Elliott, of H.M.S. Fly, recommended them to have nothing to do with Governors, as long as they could help it, but to elect a magistrate for themselves. His advice was followed; all hands were called (as may be supposed, many sea phrases have become vernacular), and Edward Quintal was installed in the curule chair. The suffrage is universal enough to satisfy Feargus O'Connor himself, all the married people being entitled to vote, men and women alike, and all the single over 18 years of age. The duties of the magistrate much resemble those of our own sheriff: to summon juries ; to call and preside at public meetings ; to levy fines, and to see that the proper quotum of labour be contributed to the public works. The office is likewise as little coveted as that of shrievalty, involving much trouble and loss of time, and being remunerated with nothing but respect. Two councillors, or assessors, are chosen at the same time with the magistrate ; not by way of constituting a tribunal, or emulating the Eoman law, but for the more sufficient reason that the elders of the community, on whom the election is most likely to fall, are indifferent scribes, so that it becomes expedient for the present to superadd coadjutors, who have enjoyed the advantage of modern schooling. The Church service is performed in the school-house. The islanders are what the descendants of British sailors ought to be, strictly of the Church of England. Their religion appears to be almost entirely of a practical nature, consisting rather in close observance of the Divine commands, than in studying abstract points of doctrine, or the subtleties of theology, about which, luckily for themselves, they know little or nothing at all. Twopenny tracts are at a discount; there is a large chestful of them in charge of the schoolmaster, very securely nailed down; while the homilies of the Church occupy an honorable place on the bookshelves of almost every house. Mr. Nobbs does not administer the Eucharist, not being himself in holy orders; but with some inconsistency, of which I reminded him, reads the Absolution. I am not quite sure, that under the peculiar circumstances of the case, his scruples are well founded ; but carefully fovebore, in conversation, attemptingto bias him one way or the other. What with an instinctive love of mother church, an overpowering desire to reason for myself, and a keen perception of the evils that must ensue from an universal exercise of private judgment, I find myself dreadfully bewildered at times. Perhaps the want of confirmation on the part of the communicants would be an additional object ion. ■:■ Like a sensible man, instead of parading his own eloquence he borrows his sermon from the works of some standard divine, excepting upon special occasions, when he cannot find 'one to suit his purpose. The first I heard him preach, after performing the marriage ceremony, was of his own composition ; plain and home-spun, but very much to the point. I suppose that Jeremy Taylor's marriage ring, which he does possess, was at once too figurative, and too plain spoken, to please his taste. He regrets very much not being in holy or-

ders, for although full influence is conceded to him, he feels that he has no right to exercise it, acting1, as he does, under no authority. I reminded him that there once were, and might be still, lecturers in our Church, acting under licence, which might possibly be obtained for him; the Metropolitan, at Sydney, having already manifested some interest in the island affairs. With regard to the school, the proficiency of his scholars proves him to have laboured honestly and well. The children evidently take delight in their lessons, if we may judge by the merry faces which come peering out at ringing of the bell; no " creeping like snail, unwillingly, to school," but scampering along the path in the cocoa tree grove which divides it from the village, as if to a game at cricket. Attendance is compulsory, by law : the parents are obliged to prepare the children with the alphabet, crede, and pater, before the age of six, at which period their schooling is commenced. Forty-six attend, and thirty, including many adults, follow the Sunday school, which is held after evening service. Saturday is a holiday, the whole population—after thefashion of the Friday mannagathering in the wilderness, —being employed in getting in a two days' store of provisions ; fishing, if the weather be fine, and wild goat hunting for the Sunday roast. For each child, Mr. Nobbs receives one shilling per month, which is paid in kind, or in labour, at the rate of two shillings a-day, should he require it. For his ministerial duties, he is allowed exemption from public works, and his house is kept in repair at the public expense; for his medical attendance he receives a few presents of yams, fish, and other provisions from his patients, which, together with the produce of a patch of land, constitute the whole of his income; leaving him not without anxiety for the prospects of his children, already eleven in number. The language of conversation, among themselves, is fast degenerating into a dialect. They can speak English, when they take the trouble —barring a few traditional vulgarisms—with remarkable purity, but with a formality of expression that shews it to be an acquired language, learned from books. " Nimis Attice." Their pronunciation is marked by a foreign accent, which, as has often been remarked in Europe, is pleasing rather than otherwise. A stranger feels surprised at first by the little occasion he finds of adapting his expression to their comprehension; but he soon learns to speak freely, assuming the acquirement of as much general information, or more, than would be expected among the corresponding class in the old countries, and that upon subjects which might have been supposed entirely beyond the range of their ken. The plan of their houses proclaims the vocation of their inventors, long wooden buildings, all exactly facing the north, with a row of portholes in front for windows, and bunks at the back for sleeping places. At the East end, a single room is partitioned off for the head of his family and his wife. The wood of which they are built is very lasting; some of the old fences, of the same material, put in by the Bounty men, are still in good preservation. They are thatched with a kind of palm (pan- i danna), much resembling the Ti tree of New Zealand, but with serrated edges to the leaves. In diet they are very abstemious, allowing themselves but two meals a day, consisting for the most part of fruit, vegetables, and fish when they can catch it. Animal food they use but sparingly, excepting at the time (if yam digging, and other seasons of hard labour. All the cooking is done under ground, in the South sea fashion, with heated stones. They have ovens, constructed in European style; but the women, who are conservative by instinct, all ihe world over, could never be brought to take heartily to the innovation. Their hospitality towards strangers is unbounded. A warmer reception, and that to all alike, without respect to persons, could be hardly given by an English host at "a Christinas family gathering. I have sometimes thought that gratitude for the favours of the British Government, —trifling enough in our eyes, but esteemed magnificent by them, —might be the prompting cause of such open-housed Amphitrionism ; yet it is extended with equal readiness to the Yankees, their most frequent visitors, whom they certainly look upon as foreigners. As soon as a parly of strangers lands, each individual may perceive that he is quietly appropriated by some one who pays him especial atten-

tion. This is his intending host, who tickles him like a trout, and baskets him almost before he is aware of it. For this arrangement there are several reasons:—that each islander may fairly share what is esteemed'a privilege rather than a duty : that the profit of the conversation might be multiplied, by " dividing the yarns ;" for, as they very sensibly observe, were all the strangers congregated together, only one at a time could speak, and the advantage to be derived from the others would be lost; and lastly that a better watch may be kept, to see that they get into no mischief. For all strangers are carefully looked after, though with such delicacy that few among them ever perceive it. On this account, we were ourselves very careful of appearances, sitting at home in the evenings instead of roaming about from house to house —or if we did go out, taking with us a torch, bearer, (who certainly always seemed to start up at our call with marvellous celerity), disclaiming altogether even the acquaintance of Comus or dark-veiled Cotytto. . Indeed we were privately informed just before our departure, that this remarkable good behaviour had been observed with some surprise, and commented upon among our entertainers. We lost nothing by it; I am sure that our weeping Aria dues at parting were neither fewer nor less grieved than | if we had made love to them " a boulets rouges." It was Milton to the letter :— With flower entangled tresses torn, The nymphs in twilight shades of tangled thickets monrn. This sensitive jealousy about the women, well exam pled by the formal law, which appoints no less than four men to look alter one woman, should she be minded to visit on board ship, is a curious feature in the island character, for in no place was* there ever less occasion for it. Diana might have recruited her band of attendant nymphs from among them, every one fit for the front rank of her grenadier company. They resign themselves very contentedly to the surveillance, and are very careful of "appearances ; generally, when from home, going in couples, like the mendicant friars of old, who were supposed to keep a vigilant eye upon each others proceedings, but with less'occasion for the significant query, " Quis custodiet ipsos custodes ?" It is an ill breeze that blows nobody good : I hold myself bound in a votive offering to Eurus, —to the gale that blew the good ship Noble away, leaving me in a plight that amply tested the sincerity of professions, which might otherwise have been rated as ordinary lip service. Missus nudus ad ignotos. In no country, though a wanderer through as many as Ulysses, have I seen the like of this community. Ornithorhinchus paradoxus is nothing to it. I never heard an oath among them, or even an angry word ; while their scrupulous adherence to truth—the first test whicli should be applied to claims of regeneration, in failure of which the most obtrusive sanctity may be at once set down for cant—their practical morality, and strong sense of religion, free from all ostentation of piety, might put very many of "the serious" in Europe to the blush. But," every bean hath its black:" even thev,as well as the vest of the world, have their skeleton in the house. The suaallness of the island, and rapid subdivision of property upon it, daily proclaims the early and inevitable breaking up of this united family; and even should the British Government accede to their wish, transplanting the whole community, root and branch to a more roomy site, still the day when they shall be called upon to break up their native hearths, and shake off associations that have been cherished from infancy, is looked forward to with repugnance, and with dread. Some while after writing the above, I fell in with an account of Pitcairn's Island, appended to the " mutiny of the Bounty," mainly drawn from the narratives of Captains Pipon, Staiiies, and Beechey. It is upon the whole as correct as could have been expected, if the limited means of observation which those gentlemen enjoyed be considered. But the compiler cannot forbear indulging the expression of certain acrimonious feelings, with which we are now familiar in the colonies, and rambles without scruple from the subject of his narrative in search of opportunity to vent them. He loses no chance of attacking the South Sea missionaries, or of ridiculing their peculiar phraseology. Flad he contented himself with shooting tlie latter shaft alone, I could have forgiven him; lor the language of which he complains can in truth be only designated as " religious slang,"

in great vogue among the various denominations of irregular clergy, and sometimes, for lack of Greek, applied in droll misapprehension of the scriptural phrases from which it is compounded. That the missionaries have their little weaknesses, aud that a few, like Pritchard, in the bigotry of zeal, have materially injured their own cause, must be allowed ; but nothing short of wilful prejudice can be blind to the general advance in the great work which their labours have effected. But the especial object of the compilers' animosity is George Nobbs, in my poor judgment most unwarrantably attacked. He is described as " a person of superior talents, and exceeding great impudence ;" as " a cause of division and dissention among the members of this society ;" it is asserted that " the only chance for the continuation of peace is the general dislike in which this Nobbs is held, and the gradual intellectual improvement of the rising generation ;" —whilst in a foot-note appended to the very page in which mention of the " superior talents" is made, we read the following :—" This Nobbs is probably one of those half witted persons who fancy they have received a call to preach nonsense—some cobler escaped from his stall, or tailor from his shopboard. Kitty Quintal's cant phrases—" we want food for our souls," and praying at meals for " spiritual nourishment," smack not a little of the jargon of the inferior class of evangelicals. Whoever this pastoral <?rone may be, it is but too evident that the preservation of the innocence, simplicity, and happiness of these amiable people, is intimately connected with his speedy removal from the island." I myself will not undertake to answer for any man, under long and intimate acquaintance, * but will give the results of my own observation. The " superior talents" of Mr. Nobbs, I was unable to perceive; he has good abilities, with some plain common sense, and nothing more. As to his being a cause of •' division and dissention," I can only say, that the present unanimity is "perfect, and that after twenty-three years residence among a people who think for themselves as sturdily as John Bull himself, he possesses their full confidence; while as to the " general dislike" in which he is held, it suffices referring to the offer, noted in their register, of paying his expenses from the Gambier islands, and to the voluntary donation of land which was made to secure his stay at Pitcairn's. As to his religious tenets, I observed, during my many conversations with him, that although he is not much of a theologian, they are tinctured more by " Church of Englandism," than by " Evangelism." But he does not seem to trouble himself much about those subtleties: he takes his Bible, and makes the best he can out of it, according to the dictates of a plain understanding. It is remarkable, in the narrative alluded to, that a merely casual mention should be made of Joshua Hill, George Nobbs' antagonist, notwithstanding his having played such a prominent part in the history of the island, and that the fact of his having been taken off by a Queen's ship should be altogether suppressed ; it has therefore struck me as not improbable that his authority might have been relied upon by the Compiler. Hinc illse lacrimse.