United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"Now, I say, Fletcher," remarked Young, rising, and placing himself nearer his friend, "it's all very well for you and me to waste our time and make fools of ourselves here; but I didn't merely come to show off my Polly. I came to ask what you think of that rumour we heard last night, that there has been some sort of plotting going on among the Otaheitan men."
IT will be remembered that nothing had been heard of the 'Bounty' since she was seen off Point Venus on the morning of September 22, 1789. In 1809, just twenty years after, when Captain Folger, of the American ship 'Topaz, landed at Pitcairn Island, one of the most remote of the islands in the Pacific, he found there a solitary Englishman and five Otaheitan women and nineteen children.
But dear Otaheitan Sally and her loving Charlie and all the rest had long before joined the Church above. There was, however, a home-sick party of the Pitcairners who could by no means reconcile themselves to the new home. These left it not very long after landing in 1856, and returned to their beloved Pitcairn.
The Otaheitan prince stepped from the deck of the whaler to court with gifts of shells the demure Quaker maidens of Wilmington, and Kanaka sailors were almost as familiar on its wharves as Indian chiefs. About the time of the Revolution the town became a well-known station for the export of quercitron bark, and all the while the clacking mills were busy along the uneasy rapids of the Brandywine.
If you insist on further explanation, good reader, and want to know something more about the rejoicing, we can only direct you to yonder clump of blossoming plants in the shade of the palm-grove. There you will find Charlie Christian looking timidly down into the gorgeous orbs of Otaheitan Sally as they hold sweet converse of things past, present, and to come.
While he was engaged with the multiplication problem on that day, he was interrupted by the sound of merry voices, and soon Otaheitan Sally, Bessy Mills, May Christian, Sarah Quintal, and his own daughter Dinah, came tripping up the hill towards him.
"It is considered," says the missionary account, "as the distinctive mark of their regal dignity, to be every where carried about on men's shoulders. As their persons are esteemed sacred, before them all must uncover below their breast. They may not enter into any house but their own, because, from that moment, it would become raã, or sacred, and none but themselves, or their train, could dwell or eat there; and the land their feet touched would be their property." It sometimes happens in other countries, it is true, that men can be found base enough to emulate beasts of burden, by drawing the carriages of their sovereign lords. This, however, is only on some peculiar occasions, where certain clear indications of personal superiority have been manifested, to induce the mass of the people to revert to the notion of their own pristine lowliness. The Otaheitan princes, on the other hand, practise less self-denial in such imposition; or, which is perhaps more likely to be the truth, they find their continuance in an exalted situation very requisite to discriminate their office, which could not be inferred from any superiority of character they possess; for, says the same account, "the king and queen were always attended by a number of men, as carriers, domestics, or favourites, who were r
So, Young called his daughter Folly, because he had an old aunt of that name who had been kind to him; and Mills called his son John, after himself, who, he said, was the kindest friend he ever had. By this time poor Otaheitan Sally became overburdened with care.
We cannot tell, but certain it is that there never was a more devoted father than this man, who in England had been branded with all that was ferocious, mean, desperate, this hardened outlaw, this chief of the mutineers. Otaheitan mothers are not particular in the matter of infant costume. Little Mary's dress may be described in one word nothing.
One or two, however, were commonplace enough, especially the wives of the three married Otaheitan men, who seemed to be, as no doubt they were, of a lower social class than the others who had mingled with the best Otaheitan society, Edward Young's wife, for instance, being a sort of native princess at least she was the daughter of a great chief.
Word Of The Day