There is no more picturesque incident, perhaps, in the annals of marine venture than the mutiny on board the British ship _Bounty_, in 1789, and the subsequent landing of several of the mutineers on Pitcairn Island, a speck of land which had been discovered some years before by Carteret, and named for the midshipman who first descried it from the masthead. These mutineers, fearing punishment, resolved to hide themselves from the world, and accordingly sought out this lonely spot, and, together with a number of Polynesian men and women, founded a new community far from the ordinary track of commerce. At first, according to the scant historical accounts which have come down to us, there was riot and reveling on the island, but gradually the rougher element in the population disappeared, and when the American vessel _Topaz_ rediscovered the little settlement in 1808, it seems to have been orderly and prosperous. For more than half a generation the whereabouts of the mutineers of the _Bounty_ had been a mystery, and their rediscovery at this time aroused a good deal of interest, especially in England. It was as if the sea had given up its dead. Everything pertaining to the little strip of land in the far Pacific was hailed with interest, and in the eighty-six years since then many books and papers descriptive of it and its people have been written. In a few weeks another volume is to be published in California by the Seventh-day Adventists, who have recently succeeded in converting the islanders to their faith. Formerly they were associated with the Church of England.