LONELY PITCAIRN

Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 313, 2 May 1911, Page 2

LONELY PITCAIRN

A VOICE FROM THE OCEAN

WASTE

The Glasgow barque Wendur called at Plymouth on February 19 bringing the latest of the scanty news that from time to time reaches the outside world of the inhabitants of Pitcairn Island, the lonely little speck of land m the Pacific between Australia and South America, where the descendants of the Bounty mutineers are still living. It was late on the night of November 19 last, said Captain G. H. Blackstock, of the "Wendur, when the barque was driving ahead at about eight knots, that his look-out man was startled at being hailed. There had been no sign of shipping for days, and m the solitary ocean waste they did not expect to be challenged by a human voice asking the name of the ship. Again

—The Cry Rang Out,— and then, m the brilliant moonlight, they saw a crowded small boat. At first it was thought there had been a shipwreck, and that these were the survivors. Captain Blackstock had his ship hove-to, and then the boat came alongside, the occupants, seventeen men and one woman, asking permission to come on board.

They explained that they were natives of Pitcairn Island, and had covered sixteen miles m their frail little craft just to intercept and exchange greetings with the Wendur, which had been seen some hours before from their look-out on the mountain top. The visitors, said Cantain Blackstock, were particularly homely, very polite, and hospitable. They said that on an average they saw only twenty vessels annually. At present there are 150 inhabitants on Pitcairn Island, women being m the great majority. The men depend for supplies on trading fruit with passing vessels for clothes, whilst money collected from passing ships is

— Given to the Women, — wlio buy clothing from a trading schooner which comes once a year to the island. The woman who visited the Wendur was Mrs Christian. Sho stated that Mr Christian, now ninetyone years of age, was the oldest inhabitant. He is a grandson of tho original Fletcher Christian, who was leader of tho mutineers of the Bounty and first landed on the island with eight other Englishmen, and six Polynesian meh and twelve Polynesian women. Mrs Christian said the health of all the inhabitants was remarkably good, and there was no desire to leave their solitary home.

It was m April, 1789, that the crew of tho Bounty, who had been sent by the Government to Tahiti to collect bread fruit plants for the West Indies, rose against Captain Bligh, who was m command, and set him adrift with eighteen men man open boat. In 1790 nine of the mutineers, under their ringleader Christian, made their homo on Pitcairn Island. The island is only two and a-half miles long and a mile wide. In the centre/ is a hill I,ooßft high. The soil is fertile, producing yams, bread fruit, bananas, sweet potatoes, etc.