APPENDIX TO FOURTH EDITION.
The interest manifested in that far-away mite in the Pacific—Pitcairn Island—and the avidity with which the first two editions of this book were sought for, has led the publishers to issue this improved edition.
Since the publication of the book many articles in regard to Pitcairn have appeared in the newspapers in all parts of this country.
The New York World sent a letter of inquiry to Miss Young, the author of this book, in October, 1893, and her answer appeared in that paper under date of January 13, 1895.
The letter is of such general interest and conveys such recent news from Pitcairn, that it is thought best to publish it herewith.
We also append an article published in Harper’s Weekly of December 8, 1894, describing a visit made by Captain Cornelius A. Davis to Pitcairn in March, 1894. The article is of particular interest because it comes from a disinterested observer.
PUBLISHERS.
MISS YOUNG’S LETTER TO THE “SUNDAY WORLD.”
Pitcairn Island, in the South Pacific,}
August 18, 1894.}
To the Sunday World—
It is probable that, such a long time having elapsed before you received any reply to your letter, you have taken it for granted that it never reached its destination. The facts in the case are that it arrived here on the 3d of February last, having been sent on from San Francisco, thence to Tahiti, and from that place to Wellington, New Zealand, to the brigantine Pitcairn, our missionary ship, which brought it here on the above-named date.
It should have been replied to in February, and the answer sent you via Pitcairn, bound to San Francisco, which place she reached somewhere near the end of March, but having had some considerable writing then on hand which it was absolutely necessary that I should finish, I was obliged to let some of my letters go unanswered, yours among the rest, and then, in the unavoidable hurry and bustle consequent upon leave taking, it was forgotten until a day or two ago.
Please pardon my carelessness, which has been quite unintentional, as I am one who does not believe in ignoring the correspondence of anyone, and would think myself guilty of rudeness not to send a reply to anyone who should show enough interest in us and our island’s history as to request any information that it is in my power to give.
I will with pleasure answer your questions, for the readers of the great Sunday World, and trust they may prove satisfactory to you, but, first, a fact or two concerning myself may prove of interest.
I am Young (one of the descendants of the original settlers), but young no longer in years, having completed my forty-first year five days ago, on the 13th inst. At the date when your letter was written, October 26, I had just passed the crisis of a fever typhus that had taken as victims twelve of our number, my honored and beloved father among the number, and, in addition to him, two brothers, a sister, and a niece.
In regard to the wish expressed in one or more of my published letters that you mentioned, i. e., that of paying a visit sometime to the outside world, or, rather, to some portion of it, that wish remains still ungratified. My mother’s father was an Englishman, who, at the age of twenty-six, decided to cast in his lot with the little handful of children of the mutineers who were in 1823 ruled over in a sort of patriarchal manner by the sole survivor of the mutineers, John Adams.
He, Adams himself, unlettered and unlearned, had, after all the rest of his companions died, most of them having been murdered, wakened up to a sense of the great responsibility that rested upon him, with the growing young community on his hands, and when, in 1823, a whale ship, the Cynes, happened to call in here, he expressed the earnest wish that someone would feel sympathy enough for him and the worse than orphaned children he was striving to lead, according to the best light he had, upward to God and good, to remain and assist him.
My grandfather, John Buffett, remained, and ever since I can remember his talking about his early boyhood home in Bristol, England, it has been my wish one day to go there. That dear hope is abandoned. I had a sister who married, and took her two little boys away to Cardigan, Wales, to her husband’s home, and she passed very near our grandfather’s early home, but that was all.
Since she went away to Wales, over eight years ago, it has been the earnestly expressed wish of my heart to pay them a visit, but my sister died in April, 1887, having been there only eleven months, and my earnest, longing wish to see my dear little nephews again will never be realized.
I have had frequent invitations from many dear, valued friends to visit America, but can see no open way yet. I had my trunk packed ready to go to California last year, but unforeseen circumstances prevented it. Five of our people from this island went, but I was not one, although I deeply grieved over it. All those who went have returned, with the exception of a young man now at school at Healdsburg, and a charming little girl adopted for a time by a minister and his wife, who have been living here, a Mr. and Mrs. Gates. I shall now take up and answer, in regular order, the points in your letter about which you request information. First, school work.
How I happened to become connected with that work was in this way—I shall have to go back many years to begin at the start: In the years 1857-1858 two families, not being altogether satisfied with the change of living on Norfolk Island, left that place and returned here, to their old home. Those families consisted of fifteen or sixteen persons, Moses Young and family, and Mayhew Young and family, which were mostly children by the wife’s former husband, a McCoy. It may interest you to know that Mayhew was so named for Captain Mayhew Folger, the American captain who discovered, away back in 1808, that this island was inhabited by the children of the mutineers.
Well, to be brief, my own father, Simon Young (I cannot begin to tell you how good he was), feeling that the children of the two families that first returned needed someone to look after their educational and spiritual affairs, determined that he would make the effort to return also and do what he could for them. His own educational advantages had been very limited, but he had made the very best use he could of them, and had taught the children, while on Norfolk Island, the art, at least, of reading, writing, and the four principal rules in arithmetic. So, in December, 1863, our family and a few others besides left Norfolk Island to come back here, arriving in the early part of February, 1864.
We left a good school and teacher behind, and I have never ceased to regret that it was never my privilege to have gone through some regular course of study, to better enable me to accomplish what has since been my life work, for I was only ten when my return here was made.
As soon as possible father took up the work of teaching the few children and young people as best he was able, and, at about fourteen years of age, I began to help him by putting the youngest through the alphabet and first reading lessons. I have had no educational privileges, and only do the best I can, with what success will be known in the great hereafter.
In February, 1893, Miss Hattie Andre, a young lady just graduated from a college in Michigan, arrived here to take charge of the school. My loved and honored father, sixty-nine years of age, then retired from the work, leaving it in the hands of Miss Andre and myself. She has a membership of about thirty-four of the young people, and I teach twenty-one of the youngest children, from the age of seven to fourteen, two of mine being Dano-Spanish boys from Mangareva, one of the Gambier Islands. Their sister attends Miss Andre’s school.
You inquire about our religious belief. When John Adams took up the work of trying to rear in righteousness the rising young community, his sole aids to education were a Bible and Book of Common Prayer, saved from the Bounty. With these extremely limited means he taught, quite successfully, the young folks to read, and, instituting some sort of religious services, he very naturally had the liturgy of the Church of England to pattern after.
This is what we had followed until October, 1886, when we, as a body, and after ten years’ searching “whether those things were so,” and battling against most unfounded and unreasonable prejudices, joined ourselves to that church known as the Seventh-day Adventists—seventh day because we believe in and preach the letter of the fourth commandment of the decalogue, and Adventists because we believe in the soon coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the clouds of heaven to take his true followers to himself.
In our view of the case this is the explanation of so much that the world at large is at present undergoing, and which seems so mysterious to those who do not make the prophecies of God’s word their study.
You very rightfully judged that we are kept pretty well posted by means of newspapers and friends, who now and then touch in here on their way to different ports, in regard to what the world is doing, but we have no regular means of correspondence. Our friends abroad take advantage of the occasional trips of our little missionary ship to send us letters and anything else, as she always comes direct to us after leaving California. She arrived on the 17th ult., and proposes to make a quick return to America (if she is not sold, as has been arranged), where she will be about the end of the present year.
Several of our people have made visits to some of the neighboring islands and some have gone to England and back, but I do not think the words “dissatisfied with our lot” can be properly applied to anyone here. In regard to myself personally, I am so in love with the free, natural life I enjoy here that I would not willingly exchange it for any other, much as I would enjoy a visit to your shores and to see in reality the life of the world of which I have read so largely—life in all its phases, from the high-toned “society” life to the very lowest. So that I do not feel that “surprised” would correctly describe my impressions.
Yes, marriage is—shall I say it?—committed among our people, the different family names numbering seven. Young, McCoy, and Christian are of the original families, and those who have come in later on are Buffett, Warren, Butler, and Coffin, the last three being Americans, and only the very last, Coffin, still lives. I think away back in the long past there were some curious “love stories” which would prove quite interesting reading, and within my own knowledge there are several that would make a good foundation for very entertaining stories should someone be found to weave them.
From the time of John Adams until the last marriage ceremony took place here—that was in 1889 (I seem to see you smile at the long space that intervenes)—the form used has been that of the Church of England. In the eighties the young people seemed to think that the chief end of man and woman, or rather of boy and girl, was marriage; and scarcely had they arrived at man’s and woman’s estate, certainly not to the estate of wisdom and prudence, when marriage was contracted. At present, and it gladdens my heart to see it, more efforts are made at getting some education than in getting married, and we have quite a company of young men and women who think more of getting what they can out of their schoolbooks than of being bound for life to one another.
I am not exactly posted as to the number of inhabitants here at present, but think that after the fourteen deaths that took place last year the population is about 136 only, the largest part being children under the age of sixteen.
It is quite universally accepted among people of the world outside our own little speck of earth that coined money is an almost unheard-of, unknown, and, of course, unused article among us, but such are not the real facts in the case. Our circumstances make it possible to exist, as far as the necessities of life are concerned, without the use of money, i. e., as far as food, fuel, water, and our houses are concerned, but for clothing we depend upon the product of our island, which we sell, when the opportunity offers, to a trader who calls here and brings us our supplies in that line. In addition to this, many friends have contributed from time to time very largely to our comfort in gifts of clothing and other things that we cannot procure here.
Our “standard of value” is the American dollar and the English pounds, shillings, and pence, on which no discount is made here, as we are English subjects. It would amuse you to see how many and various are the coins that pass through our hands, and whose value often puzzles us. As we are not in a position to obtain (except on occasions when we are visited by a British ship of war) more than a few cents at a time, in exchange for fruit and curios, we do not, as do Sabbath schools abroad, contribute every week, but the dimes, quarters, shillings and pence that may be obtained from passing ships are carefully hoarded for the quarterly donation.
We have a Sabbath school of 125 members, varying in age from two years to seventy-two; and happy the child, as well as the grown-up, who has an offering as large as a quarter to donate at the beginning of every quarter. We are glad at the thought of our little “mite” contributed towards the missionary ship Pitcairn, the first one to be built and used in the interests of the Seventh-day Adventists, and that our Sabbath school is self-supporting.
Our amusements consist, I may say, in a change of occupations. A peculiar way in which to amuse one’s self, you will think, but really our time is too fully occupied in so many different ways to have time or inclination even for amusements that are amusements merely. If the boys can have enough powder for their guns to boom away at their own sweet will, they ask for no greater pleasure, and one unwearying source of enjoyment for the young people here is to gather around an organ and spend the time in singing to the accompaniment of the instrument.
You ask if a photographer has ever come to our shores. Yes, many of them, and many views have been taken, not only of the varied scenery, but of the people, mostly in groups. Last March an American shipmaster, Captain Davis, was here and spent most of his time taking pictures. Among others, he took that of Miss Andre and her school, and of me and my bare-footed little boys and girls.
The gentleman and lady mentioned above, Mr. and Mrs. Gates, had been living with us for eighteen months, and last February, when they were leaving, I gave Mr. Gates a manuscript copy of a little work I had been writing, the facts connected with this island’s history from the time it was inhabited by the Bounty’s mutineers up to date. I did not confine myself to solid work, but only wrote at long intervals, so that what should have been finished within a short time was dragged out to a length of six years. Possibly some of the photographic views taken here will be used to illustrate the little work. It should be going through the press now, if not already gone, and will be brought out in book form—only a very simple, modest affair—at the Pacific Press, Oakland, Cal., where you may obtain a copy if you have enough interest in it to order one.
I have already written longer then I should have done, and fear my long letter will prove a tax to your patience, but your questions have been answered at some length, so I trust you will excuse my trespassing on your valuable time to read all this product of my pen.
I shall be pleased to have you write when you are so inclined, and also to learn when you get this letter.
Yours very cordially,
Rosalind A. Young.