Volume I:
p. 34, islanders on Pitcairn Island: In conducting the most trivial affairs they are guided by the Scriptures, which they have read diligently, and from which they quote with a freedom and frequency that rather impair the effect.
p. 38: The few books they possess have been obtained from sailors visiting their shores, and are chiefly of a religious tenor. Some volumes, also, which were removed from the Bounty are still preserved in the house formerly occupied by the patriarch John Adams.
p. 47-48, on the Bounty survivors: The fate of this small band of colonists (which consisted of fifteen men and twelve women) was retributive and melancholy in the extreme. All of their number met with violent deaths, excepting Adams, Young, and some of the Tahitian females. Fletcher Christian and John Mills were shot on the same day, by the Tahitians; the grave of the former was pointed out to me: it is situated a short distance up a mountain, and in the vicinity of a pond. Isaac Martin, . . . Williams, and William Brown, shared a similar fate. Several of the Tahitian men fell also in these conflicts; and the survivors, when in a fair way to exterminate their British rivals, were themselves slaughtered, “at one fell swoop,” by their own wives and countrywomen. Matthew Quintal, whose temper was uniformly tyrannical and quarrelsome, was shot by his comrades, who, it is charitable to believe, were compelled to resort to that measure in self-defence. William M’Coy became delirious (partly, it was thought, through remorse for the part he had taken in the destruction of Quintal,) and drowned himself in the sea, with a stone tied round his neck. Brown, Martin, and Williams died without issue. Mills had an only son, who was killed by a fall from a cliff, and one daughter, who is married into the family of the Youngs: the other mutineers have perpetuated their names through a numerous Anglo-Tahitian progeny.
* Footnote: The present race of people speak of the bark of their fathers with much interest. They showed us many of her relicks, and from among them we obtained a blank log-book, of antiquated appearance. On the interior of its cover was a card, engraved with fanciful devices, a coat of arms, with the motto “Pro Deo patria et amicis,” and a scroll, bearing the name of Fran. Hayward, which would declare the owner of the book to have been one of the midshipmen of the Bounty who accompanied Lieutenant Bligh in the launch.
p. 70: The principal improvements the natives have made are in religious observances, and in the acquirement of the rudiments of education: the greater number can read the Scriptures in the Tahitian tongue; many can write a legible hand, and some few possess a good knowledge of arithmetic.
p. 207: on literacy on Oahu where almost everyone can read, and the English School contains a library and periodical publications: The upper part of the building is that applied to the service of the church, and is furnished in a neat and appropriate manner; while several apartments beneath, provided with a library and periodical publications, are open to
the public as reading rooms.
p. 225-26 The Sandwich Islanders are on the whole better educated than the Tahitians. Their missionaries are active in encouraging amongst them a taste for general knowledge, and in affording them the means of gratifying it. While we remained at Oahu, a weekly periodical in the native language was regularly issued from the Missionary Press; it is entitled “ Ka Kumu Hawaii,” or “The Hawaiian Teacher,” and consists of a single sheet, containing subjects for moral and general instruction, local intelligence, and traditional songs of the islands; and is embellished with wood-cuts, illustrative of public buildings in Europe, foreign animals, and other objects calculated to excite curiosity in the native mind. The Missionaries had made considerable progress in the compilation of a complete Hawaiian dictionary; while school-books and religious publications, also printed in the native tongue, were so numerous and well-diffused as to be seen in almost every peasant’s hut.
Volume II, concludes the voyage from Polynesia to the Cape of Good Hope, St. Helena, and to London. It also contains the Zoology and Botany appendices.
p. 195: The log-book, or journal, of a South-Seaman has some peculiarities which distinguish it from the same document of a merchant-ship; these are chiefly a more copious detail of the natural objects noticed in the sea or air from day to day, and notes of the principal events occurring in the pursuit of whales. Should Sperm Whales have been seen, but not secured to the ship, the entry of the day’s work is preceded by the figure of a whale’s head. Should whales have been captured, the same space is occupied by the representation of as many erect flukes as there were whales obtained. When a dead whale is accidentally found floating on the water, and is taken to the ship, the distinguishing mark in the journal is the same as the last, with the exception that the flukes are reversed.