INTRODUCTION

TO THE ISLAND.

ON the 28th of April, 1789, the Bounty was on its way from Otaheite with a cargo of bread fruit trees, which the English Government wished to naturalize in the West Indies, when the larger part of the crew, headed by Christian the mate, seized the commander, Captain Bligh, and launched him, together with eighteen others who remained faithful to their duty, in an open boat upon the wide ocean. The remainder, twenty-eight in number, of whom four were detained against their will, set sail for Toobonai, one of the Friendly Islands; thence they returned to Otaheite, where Christian landed the majority of the mutineers, while himself and eight of his comrades went back to Toobonai, with the intention of settling there. The natives regarding them as intruders, Christian and his company again put to sea, and established themselves, in 1790, upon Pitcairn's Island, which was then uninhabited. Captain Bligh, with twelve of his men, got safe to England, and the Pandora was de

spatched to Otaheite, to apprehend the mutineers. Fourteen were captured, and of these four were drowned on the voyage, and three executed in England. It was in anticipation of the search for them at Otaheite that Christian and his party sought a securer home, and they took the further precaution to burn the ship as soon as they were settled upon Pitcairn's Island. No one guessed what had become of them till the captain of an American vessel chanced, in 1809, to stop at their place of retreat, and learnt their curious story.

They had carried with them from Otaheite six Tahitian men and twelve women. Quarrels broke out, a war of races commenced, and ultimately the nine Englishmen were killed or died, with the exception of one Smith, who assumed the name of Adams, and was the patriarch of the colony, which amounted in all to thirty-five. Adams, touched by the tragedies he had witnessed, had trained up the half-caste children of himself and his countrymen in the way they should go, and they presented the singular spectacle of a moral, a united, and a happy family sprung from a colony of ferocious mutineers.

Such was the romance upon which the poet founded the tale of "The Island," though he has interwoven with the central narrative a marvellous incident from Mariner, which relates to an entirely different adventure.

The Island was written at Genoa, early in 1823, and published in June of that year.

THE ISLAND.

CANTO THE FIRST.

I.

THE morning watch was come; the vessel lay
Her course, and gently made her liquid way;
The cloven billow flashed from off her prow
In furrows formed by that majestic plough;
The waters with their world were all before;
Behind, the South Sea's many an islet shore.
The quiet night, now dappling, 'gan to wane,
Dividing darkness from the dawning main ;
The dolphins, not unconscious of the day,
Swam high, as eager of the coming ray;
The stars from broader beams began to creep,
And lift their shining eyelids from the deep;
The sail resumed its lately shadowed white,
And the wind fluttered with a freshening flight;
The purpling ocean owns the coming sun,
But ere he break a deed is to be done.

II.

The gallant chief within his cabin slept,
Secure in those by whom the watch was kept:
His dreams were of Old England's welcome shore,
Of toils rewarded, and of dangers o'er ;

His name was added to the glorious roll

Of those who search the storm-surrounded Pole.
The worst was over, and the rest seemed sure,*
And why should not his slumber be secure?
Alas! his deck was trod by unwilling feet,
And wilder hands would hold the vessel's sheet:
Young hearts, which languished for some sunny isle,
Where summer years and summer women smile;
Men without country, who, too long estranged,
Had found no native home, or found it changed,
And, half uncivilized, preferred the cave
Of some soft savage to the uncertain wave
The gushing fruits that nature gave untilled;
The wood without a path but where they willed;
The field o'er which promiscuous Plenty poured
Her horn; the equal land without a lord;

The wish — which ages have not yet subdued
In man
to have no master save his mood; †

* ["A few hours before, my situation had been peculiarly flattering. I had a ship in the most perfect order, stored with every necessary, both for health and service; the object of the voyage was attained, and two thirds of it now completed. The remaining part had every prospect of success." BLIGH.]

+["The women of Otaheite are handsome, mild, and cheerful in manners and conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient delicacy to make them be admired and be

The earth, whose mine was on its face, unsold,
The glowing sun and produce all its gold;
The freedom which can call each grot a home;
The general garden, where all steps may roam,
Where Nature owns a nation as her child,
Exulting in the enjoyment of the wild;

Their shells, their fruits, the only wealth they know,
Their unexploring navy, the canoe;

Their sport, the dashing breakers and the chase;
Their strangest sight, an European face:·

Such was the country which these strangers yearned To see again; a sight they dearly earned.

Awake, bold Bligh! the foe is at the gate!
Alas! it is too late!

Awake! awake!

Fiercely beside thy cot the mutineer

Stands, and proclaims the reign of rage and fear. Thy limbs are bound, the bayonet at thy breast; The hands, which trembled at thy voice, arrest; Dragged o'er the deck, no more at thy command The obedient helm shall veer, the sail expand;

loved. The chiefs were so much attached to our people, that they rather encouraged their stay among them than otherwise, and even made them promises of large possessions. Under these and many other concomitant circumstances, it ought hardly to be the subject of surprise that a set of sailors, most of them void of connections, should be led away, where they had the power of fixing themselves, in the midst of plenty, in one of the finest islands in the world, where there was no necessity to labor, and where the allurements of dissipation are beyond any conception that can be formed of it."- BLIGH.]