John Adams and his family. Page 115.
Whatever the daughter of Adams may have feared in her love for her father, he himself did not appear afraid to receive these English visitors to his island refuge. For he felt that as, in the sight of God, his sin had for Christ’s sake been pardoned, so in the eyes of men these long years of penitence, and of honest endeavor after a better life, would surely have won pardon for the sins of his youth. It was with feelings too deep for words that he looked once more on the faces of his countrymen and heard the English speech from other lips than those to whom he had taught it. All the memories of early days awoke in him, and he longed to return once more and see his native land before he died. But as soon as those round him understood his wish, they seized his hands, they clung around him, praying him with tears not to desert them, not to leave his children; and Adams, much moved, promised to remain. And indeed he would have been sorely missed had he gone, for he was the chief authority on the island. He it was who each Sunday led the prayers of the islanders, all assembled around him in the church which they had built, thinking, as they joined in the words of the service, of their unknown brethren in the great country beyond the seas. He it was who explained week by week the words of the Bible to his listening companions, taught the children, and married the young people.
It was to Adams that every dispute was referred; all those slight disagreements which spring up from time to time, but which with the islanders were never, as they said, more than word-of-mouth quarrels, and always ended before set of sun.
The captains, though anxious to linger awhile in this island home, were obliged to leave next day, and they departed amid the regrets and farewells of these simple-hearted, affectionate people, a people Christian in heart as well as in name,—sincere, modest, pure, and unselfish, whose life seemed to be fashioned on the words of God’s Book, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.”
And all this peace and happiness has sprung, under the blessing of God, from the seeds of His truth sown long, long years before in the hearts of two English sailors, and from the power of His truth in His written word, and in the teaching of His Spirit.
NORFOLK ISLAND.
Far distant from the many other islands with which the Southern Pacific Ocean is studded, one stands alone, rich in natural beauty, and with a climate almost unrivalled.
This lovely island was visited by Captain Cook in 1774, and named by him Norfolk Island; it was then uninhabited, and neither the vegetable nor the animal world had been disturbed. For about two hundred yards from the shore, the ground was covered so thickly with shrubs and plants as scarcely to be penetrable further inland. The account given by Cook led to an attempt at settlement on Norfolk Island; but this was attended with difficulty. The island is small, being only about six miles in length by four in breadth; and was therefore unavailable for a large or increasing population. Lying nine hundred miles from Port Jackson, in Australia, it was inconveniently remote from that country; and, worst of all, its cliffy and rocky shores presented serious dangers to mariners attempting a landing. Its general unsuitableness, however, for ordinary colonization, was considered to adapt it as a penal settlement, subordinate to New South Wales, and to which convicts could be sent who merited fresh punishment while in course of servitude. Thus, one of the loveliest of earthly paradises was doomed to be a receptacle for the very worst of malefactors. It was imagined that the beauty of Norfolk Island, and the fineness of its climate, would greatly tend to soothe the depraved minds of its unhappy tenants, and reconcile them to compulsory expatriation; but such was not the case: the feeling uppermost in the minds of the convicts was to make their escape; and this, along with other circumstances, caused the island, after a time, to be abandoned as a penal settlement. The narrative that follows may be relied upon as a true relation of facts, and will, it is hoped, afford warning to such as may be tempted to go astray, and deeply impress those who may be on the verge of crime, with the danger of their situation, by showing them that a course of error is a course of misery, ending in consequences the most afflicting.