This section is from the book "Chambers's Concise Gazetteer Of The World", by David Patrick. Also available from Amazon: Chambers's Concise Gazetteer Of The World.
Pitcairn Island, a solitary island in the Pacific Ocean, between Australia and South America, in 25° 3' S. lat. and 130° 8' W. long., measures 2 1/2 miles by 1 mile. When discovered by Carteret in 1767 it was uninhabited. In 1790 it was taken possession of by nine of the mutineers of H.M.S. Bounty, with six Tahitian men and a dozen women. Four years later the Tahitian men one night murdered all the Englishmen, except one, who afterwards assumed the name of John Adams. Thereupon the women, in revenge, murdered all the Tahitian men. According to another account, the white men and the Tahitians murdered each other at intervals. Certain it is that at the end of ten years John Adams was left alone, with eight or nine women and several children; and from them the present inhabitants (126 in 1901) are descended. Adams, changed by these tragic adventures, set about the Christian education of his companions. The little colony was discovered in 1808 by an American sealing ship; the first British vessel to visit it arrived in 1814. The islanders in 1831 had increased to 87, so at their own request they were removed to Tahiti by the British government. But, disgusted by their Tahitian relatives, most of them came back to Pitcairn Island after about nine months. The island was annexed to Britain in 1839. Nearly 200 of the islanders were transferred to Norfolk Island in 1856, but a number of them again returned. Pitcairn Island enjoys a lovely climate; its mountainous surface reaches 1008 feet in Outlook Ridge; the soil is fertile, and produces yams, cocoa-nuts, bread-fruit, sweet potatoes, bananas, etc. The people are degenerating, from intermarriage and their being able to live without exertion. See works by Sir J. Barrow (1831), Lady Belcher (1870), and T. B. Murray (1854; new ed. 1885).
 
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