“The history of your island will long, I may say always, be a wonder. During the sixty years that I remember it, it has been a wonder, and it will continue to be, as wonders do not decrease in interest. Three-quarters of a century have gone into the great ocean of time since Captain Mayhew Folger discovered the colony, and the interest in the history of the island is unabated. The island cannot be mentioned without exciting a wonder even in the mind of the unlearned, as to the history of the colonists, their present status, and, indeed, all that concerns them. “In connection with the truth concerning the colonists, there has been a great deal of error and nonsense published. _Blackwood’s Magazine_ is not free from being a participant in setting afloat most senseless statements, which were about twenty-four years since repeated in this country. There are very few living who can enter into the _spirit_ of Pitcairn’s history, and, what is to me most singular and unaccountable, a large number of would-be historians are engaged in uttering most senseless pretensions to correct the history of the island, from the arrival of the _Bounty_ until the arrival of the _Topaz_—a period of twenty years when nothing was known, nor could be known, of the island, nor was known until the arrival of the _Topaz_ in February, 1808. “You, undoubtedly, have had access to the account of the mutiny by Captain Bligh, also to ‘Delano’s Voyages,’ published in 1817, in which are two letters from Captain Folger, one to Captain Delano, and one to the Lords of the Admiralty, R. N., and which was received by them through Rear-Admiral Hotham, who, in 1813, was, I think, in command of the English blockading squadron on our coast in the War of 1812.... It was through Rear-Admiral Hotham that my father sent the Azimuth compass, and within five years last past I have noticed in some publication (I cannot state what one) that Her Majesty’s navy had obtained the _Bounty’s_ chronometer, which was taken from my father at Valparaiso when his vessel was confiscated by the Spanish governor of Chile when he reached the South American Coast, after having visited Pitcairn’s Island. “As your grandfather, Mr. Buffett, mentions ‘Delano’s Voyages,’ I suppose you too have read that, in many respects, curious book. In the main, the portion which refers to my father is correct. Captain Delano visited my father at Kendal in 1817.... In reading Mr. Delano’s book you will find a letter to the Lords of the Admiralty dated at Kendal.... If I were to write a history of the island, I could give a chronological statement that would be in order and critically correct, as I think I have in my library every date from the discovery of the island in 1767, by Captain Cartaret, of H. B. M. ship _Swallow_, to the present time.... “Since writing the foregoing, I concluded to copy all the entries from my father’s logbook in which the island is mentioned....