The kind people on board seemed to vie with each other in their efforts to entertain and please, showing their visitors about their huge home on the waters, and how they lived, enjoying, too, the evident wonder and admiration displayed by their guests as they watched the revolving of the mighty engines, and also the keen pleasure and interest they manifested in everything they saw around them. On deck the band was playing, while in one of the rooms below one of the officers was seated at a piano, making music for a company of admiring listeners. In the gun room the crowd of young officers had gathered the schoolchildren together, and persuaded them to sing some of their songs and glees, they in return singing some of their bright, lively songs. The hours flew quickly, and soon one by one the islanders passed down the steep sides of the ship to return home, after wishing their kind visitors good-by, and carrying with them a lively remembrance of their delightful entertainment on board, while the _Shah_, with her over eight hundred souls, steamed on her way and was soon out of sight. The following is the report of Rear-Admiral de Horsey, commander in chief on the Pacific station, which was received at the admiralty:— “September 17, 1878. Sir, I request you will acquaint the lords commissioners of the admiralty that, as Pitcairn Island lay in my track from Esquimalt to Valparaiso, and the weather being sufficiently favorable for landing, I took advantage of the circumstance to visit that island, for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of the inhabitants, and also to obtain refreshments on this long voyage. Having sighted Pitcairn at daylight on the 8th inst., we arrived at Bounty Bay at 8 A. M., and remained off the island until noon the following day, when we proceeded on our voyage. “A few particulars as to the present condition of this small and almost inaccessible island, the only spot of British territory lying in the vast triangle between Vancouver, Falkland, and Fiji Islands, may not be uninteresting to their lordships, and are therefore made the subjects of this letter. The population at present numbers ninety, of all ages, of which forty-one are males and forty-nine females.... There is but one survivor of the generation which immediately followed the mutineers, viz., Elizabeth Young, aged about eighty-eight, daughter of John Mills, gunner’s mate of the _Bounty_, and of an Otaheitian mother. “The oldest man on the island is Thursday October Christian, grandson of Fletcher Christian, master’s mate of the _Bounty_. The population may be further described as consisting of sixteen men, nineteen women, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls. The deaths on the island have numbered about twelve in the last nineteen years, as no contagious diseases visit the island....