Litchfield enquirer., 1871-03-30
THE MUTINEERs OF THE BOUNTY
FORTUNES OF THE COLONY OF PITcARIN's
 ISLAND.
AN IDYL1 OF THE PACIFIC.

Few episodes of modern history are so full of romantic interest as the Mutiny of the Bounty and the subsequent adventures of the mutineers on Pit0airn's Island. It has been recited again and again in mag azines and books of travels, nor has the repetition in any manner weakened the spell it exercises over the English reader. It furnished Lord Byron with the theme of one of the longest of his narrative poems, and has almost realized the dream of Uto- pia or Atlantis From time to time the matter has been brought back freshly to the public mind as later accounts were re- ceived from the descendants of the muti- out the whole sad, affecting story, with the help of original documents and correspon- dence never before printed, and the vol. ume is just ready for publication by the Harpers.
 The Bounty sailed from the Downs on the 23d December, 1787, in command of Lieutenant Bligh. of the Royal Navy. hay ing been commissioned to transport young bread fruit trees from Otaheite to the Brit ish West Indies. It had been suggested to the government that the bread fruit tree would be 8 desirable acquisition for the colonies in the Carribean to afford food for for the negroes, and it was determined that the experiment should be made. Af- ter 6 tedious and stormy passage, the Boun- ty arrived at Otaheite on the 25th of Oc- tober, 1788. Some months were spent in collecting the plants, but at last one thous. and were stored away in the ship, and Lieutenant Bligh set sail for the West In. dies on the 26th of April, 1789.
 Lieutenant Bigh, who was an excellent sailor, and afterwards approved himself as a daring officer in naval combat, seems to have been 8 man of ungovernable passions, and certainly treated his officers and crew with cruelty that might be called fendish. The result of this was that on the 28th of April, the mate, Fletcher Christian (the hero of Lord Byron's poem) with the aid of three or four of the crew siezed the ship, put Lieutenant Bligh and eighteen of the officers and crew into the launch, and set them adrift, and went upon another course. Bligh and his companions succeeded in reaching one of the Friendly 1sles, only to he assailed by the unfriendly natives with the loss of one of their number killed, and were thus compelled to trust the chances of the wide ocean in their open boat with scanty provisions; but, after many hard ships, they gained port of safety, having accomplished in forty-one days voyage of three thousand six hundred and eighteen miles.
 Now in command of the Bounty, Chris tian, after touching at several points in the Pacific, and leaving sixteen of his company on the island of Tahiti, sailed away with eight white men and nineteen of the na- tives, men and women, to Pitcairn's Is- land. A
 This was a small, lonely, almost inac- cessible and uninhabited rock, scarcely two leagues in extent, lying out of the track of the whaling ships and rarely visited by them or any ether vessels-a mere speck in the wide waste of the Pacific. Christian had selected it for retreat, rightly think ing that he would there be safe from the reach of the law, under which his crime of mutiny was punishable with death. He reached it in safety early in January, 179O,