This lovely island was visited by Captain Cook in 1774, and named by him Norfolk Island; it was then uninhabited, and neither the vegetable nor the animal world had been disturbed. For about two hundred yards from the shore, the ground was covered so thickly with shrubs and plants as scarcely to be penetrable further inland. The account given by Cook led to an attempt at settlement on Norfolk Island; but this was attended with difficulty. The island is small, being only about six miles in length by four in breadth; and was therefore unavailable for a large or increasing population. Lying nine hundred miles from Port Jackson, in Australia, it was inconveniently remote from that country; and, worst of all, its cliffy and rocky shores presented serious dangers to mariners attempting a landing. Its general unsuitableness, however, for ordinary colonization, was considered to adapt it as a penal settlement, subordinate to New South Wales, and to which convicts could be sent who merited fresh punishment while in course of servitude. Thus, one of the loveliest of earthly paradises was doomed to be a receptacle for the very worst of malefactors. It was imagined that the beauty of Norfolk Island, and the fineness of its climate, would greatly tend to soothe the depraved minds of its unhappy tenants, and reconcile them to compulsory expatriation; but such was not the case: the feeling uppermost in the minds of the convicts was to make their escape; and this, along with other circumstances, caused the island, after a time, to be abandoned as a penal settlement. The narrative that follows may be relied upon as a true relation of facts, and will, it is hoped, afford warning to such as may be tempted to go astray, and deeply impress those who may be on the verge of crime, with the danger of their situation, by showing them that a course of error is a course of misery, ending in consequences the most afflicting.