At Tahaiti, as already stated, I met with one of Adams's wives, who had arrived there a short time before in an European ship, and from her I learnt many of the particulars here related. She spoke tolerably good English, but with a foreign accent. This old woman had been induced, by that longing for our native home which acts so powerfully upon the human mind, to return to the land of her birth, where she intended to have closed her life, but she soon changed her mind. The Tahaitians, she assured me, were by no means so virtuous as the natives of the little Paradise to which she was now all impatience to return. She had a very high opinion of her Adams, and maintained that no man in the world was worthy of comparison with him. She still spoke with vehement indignation of the murder of the English by her countrymen, and boasted of the vengeance she had taken. Adams, who was now very aged and feeble, had proposed to the Missionaries to send a Tahaitian as his successor; and fearing that the population of his island might exceed the means of subsistence which their quantity of arable land afforded, he was desirous of settling some of his families in Tahaiti. With his first wish the Missionaries will certainly comply as a means of extending their dominion over Pitcairn Island also. May Adams's paternal government never be exchanged for despotism, nor his practical lessons of piety be forgotten in empty forms of prayer. In the year 1791, the English frigate Pandora was sent, under the command of Captain Edwards, to the South Sea in pursuit of the mutineers against Bligh. Those who had remained in Tahaiti were found and carried back to England, where they were condemned to death according to the laws; the royal mercy was extended to a few only, the rest suffered the full penalty of their crime. [Illustration: CHART OF THE NAVIGATORS' ISLANDS] THE NAVIGATORS' ISLANDS. THE NAVIGATORS' ISLANDS. On leaving Tahaiti, I proposed to pass a few days on the Radack Islands, which I had formerly discovered; and, on my way thither, determined to visit the Navigators' Islands. These are probably the same seen by Roggewin in 1721, which he called Baumann's Islands; but Bougainville has appropriated the discovery, as made by him in 1766, and given them the name they now bear, on account of the superior sailing vessels built there, and the remarkable skill the inhabitants display in their management. Neither Roggewin nor Bougainville have given their situation accurately, nor have these original errors been perfectly corrected by the unfortunate La Pérouse, or the Englishman Edwards, who alone are known to have since touched on these islands; the former visited only the more northern islands; and the latter communicated no particulars of his voyage to the public. I therefore considered it worth the trouble to complete the survey, by examining those which lay to the south of La Pérouse's track.