appeared studious to oblige each other; but the Pitcairn females were objects of particular regard; tall, robust, and beautifully formed, their faces beaming with smiles and unruffled good humour; their teeth, like ivory, were regular and beautiful, without a single exception; all of them had fine eyes, and the most marked English features; their dress, which the heat of the climate requires to be scanty, was still such as the strictest modesty would require; and their behaviour is entitled to the warmest praise; for instead of the wanton and licentious carriage which characterizes the females of all the other South Sea islands, the greatest propriety prevailed in all their actions.
Smith, whom we shall hereafter call John Adams, assured Sir Thomas Staines, that, since Mr. Fletcher Christian’s death, there had not been a single instance of infidelity in the married women, nor of doubtful chastity in the others, and that he was equally ignorant of any attempt at seduction on the part of the males. They were all made to labour while young in the cultivation of the ground; and when possessed of a sufficient quantity of cleared land, and of stock sufficient to maintain a family, they were allowed to marry, but always with the consent of Adams, who united them by a formal ceremony; and “they bade fair,” says Sir Thomas Staines, “to raise a progeny, beautifully formed as any in Europe.”
The greatest harmony prevailed in this little society; their only quarrels, and these rarely happened, being, according to their own expression, “quarrcls of the mouth.” They were honest in their dealings, which consisted of bartering different articles for mutual accommodation. Their habitations were extremely neat: all that was done was obviously undertaken on a settled plan, unlike any thing to be met with in the other islands. In their houses they had a good deal of decent furniture, consisting of beds laid upon bedsteads, with neat covering; they had also tables and large chests to contain their valuables and clothing, the latter of which was made from the bark of trees growing on the island, prepared chiefly by the Otaheitean women, five of whom were still surviving, exclusive of the wives of Adams, and young Christian. The ground
