Pitcairn Island | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 18, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 36.

Pitcairn Island.

WE have been favored with the following extract from a lady's letter:

"I must not forget to tell you of one very pleasant experience of this passage. F. intended to come up through the Fijis, that being the shortest route, but the wind we had at starting soon squashed that, so we had to come round Pitcairn Island, which we sighted at 4 A. M. When nearly up to the island it fell calm, and a boat with ten men came off to us with quantities of fruit—oranges, lemons, limes, bananas, cocoanuts, pines, rose apples, jack fruit, Cape gooseberries, sugar cane, and pumpkins. They pressed F. very hard to go ashore and take me, but he would not leave the ship, but intrusted me to Mckoy, the head man of the island, who took me off in his boat. We pulled for about an hour, the men all singing from 'Moody and Sankey,' to the landing, close to the wreck of the old Bounty, where some of the women of the island met me and showed me everything. I had to go into each house, and every one gave me something—relics of the Bounty, old native curiosities, coral shells, baskets, straw hats, fresh fish, cocoa-nut oil, choucokki, arrowroot, coffee, tappa, or native cloth, and some most awful combinations which I was recommended to eat for supper; but those I handed over to the apprentices, who in their turn consigned them to the deep. Besides all this they ransacked the island for fresh eggs, and when I left, all the inhabitants escorted me to the beach, laden with these presents and a fresh supply of fruit. I was on the island four hours, when F. signalled with a rocket for my return. A fresh regiment pulled me off for about five miles, and they stayed till midnight, singing 'Moody and Sankey,' and as the ship was proceeding slowly all the time, they must have had about twelve miles to pull back. The vegetation of the island is simply magnificent, everything appearing to grow spontaneously. Some of the orange and bread fruit trees were gigantic, and the whole place was sickly with the scent of the orange blossoms. Flowers grew everywhere, heads of double geraniums as large as my head, and some splendid lilies. Our cabin was like a florist's shop for the next fortnight. I was very much pleased with it all, and they said I was the first English lady who had been there for twenty-five years. They have built a nice little church and schoolhouse, and they seem perfectly happy and contented. Pitcairn is a small island in the Polynesian Archipelago, and was first taken possession of in 1790, by some mutineer sailors of the English ship Bounty.—London Times."