The Pitcairn Islanders.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXIV, Issue 7497, 21 April 1899, Page 4

The Pitcairn Islanders.

(Westminster Gazette ) The romantic story of the mutiny of the Bounty was better known to young foik3 of the l*st generation than it is to those of today. It waa in 1789 that some of the crew of Her Majesty's ship Bounty mutinied and let Captain Btigh with 18 men adrift. Bligh was a man of passionate and overbearing temper, and the crew had been demoralised by six months' sojourn in the lotu3 land of Tahiti. Bligh, after being six weeks in the open boat, reached Timor, bat the mutineers, alter first going back to Tahiti, disappeared, and all traces of them were lost until 19 years afterwards, when an American sealing •hip touched at a lonely little island in the South Pacific _ Ocea-j, lying midway between Tahiti and • aater Island. Here on Pitcairn Island, the mystery of the mutineers waa solved. Nine of the crew of the Bounty, with six Tahitian men and a dozen women had landed there in 1790. But although there were coco*nut and bread fruit trees, yam 3 atd bananas growing on the ia and, is wa3 no Garden of Eden, for the evil spirits which had invaded it. White men and 'Tahitians murdered each other at intervals, and ten years afterwards one man, John Adams, wa9 left with eight or nine women and several children, from whom the preaeot colony of 14*2 people (AoguaC, 1898) has sprung. In 1 S3l their numbers had iecreaaed largely, and they migrated to Tahiti, but the greater part of them soon returned to Pitcairn Island, 'n 1556 again there was a transference of many of the cofooy to Norfolk Island, but the most of these also made their way bick again. I he occasional visits paid by ships to this remote spot and the reports brought back have roused jjreat interest in this little solitary iVand peopled in si strange a way. It looked for a time as if all the passions on which the olony was first foanded had died amy, leaving a pious little community of ■Ma and women. Certainly np to a point

a great change was wrought, bat the late3t report issued by the Colonial Office on the condition of the Fitcairn Islanders a melancholy story of decadance and deterioration. The report consists of correspondence. The first letter le from Rear-Admiral Pailiser, who, wrifing in April, 1898, speaks of the deterioration through the effects of inter-marriage and over-population and the lack of moral fibre, which he attributes to the absence of discipline, and of incentiv to work Later in the same year Sir G. T. Si.« TJrien, the High Commissioner for the (,v eatera Pacific, informed Mr Chamberlain that the islanders, unless something be done, will drift into imbecility, And yet we read : . "They begin and end thrir day with prayer: they never drink nor smoke; and they appear to bo almost vegetarians. If they are questioned, the questions mast be pat in plain, simple language, or they do no* understand." Some people would Imagine that living on vegetable food and abstaining from alcohol and tobacco should produce an ideal condition of purity. Bat the laws of nature are relentless, and inter-breeding is showing its fatal consequences. One peculiar feature is that both men and women lo3e their front teeth, which tho Staff Surgeon of the Royalist ascribes to "degeneration" or " physical devolution." Neither are human pissions dormant in this Eden, for we read that ia the 18 month 3 previoas to November, 1597, there had been "seven birth?, one death f-om natural causes and two murders." It has been suggested that the islanders should be transferred to Fiji, but Sir_ G. T. M. O'Brien does not agree with this, He recommends deporticg them to Norfolk Island. It is to bs hoped at any rate that something may be devised to prevent this outlying group of people from finking back hopelessly in the scale of civilisation after showing promise of an ideal life. There is tragedy ia this Colonial Office report, but there is comedy as well, as may ba seen from the laws and regulations governing the island, set forth in a copy dated March, 1594. Amongst them are the following qaaint provisions : " So parson or persons to bring cocoanats from t'other side or any part of the aland without their being accompanied by one of the authorities or churchwardens."

What the connection is between cocoanuta and churchwardens it would be difficult to understand, but it suggests uses for those officials which are strange to us. Dogs are closely looked after. If they chase sheep, or fowls, they suffer the penalty of death :

" Should any dog be found killing fowls or eating eggs, it is to be killed for the first offence."

But the dog and cat clause is delicionsly quaint in its provisions and language : "No person or persons are to kill any cats unless doing him damage. If anyone be found fo doing, shall be punished by having his dog taken from him and be killed ; and should the person have no dog, he shill be punished by the Magistrate. Should a dog go out with his master and fall in with a cat and him, and the owner of the dog make all effort to save the cat, this will save the dog, though the cat die afterwards ; but should no effort be made to save the cat, the dog must be confined for the first offence, and be kilied for the second.

Another law relating to pigs is a little difficult to comprehend : " No hogs are allowed to run loose only in c»se of sickness."

These quaint provisions will give some idea of the primitive problems of life and society on Pitcairn Islands.