Revised Jun 22 2021
In addition to the pressure of domestic affliction, which weighed heavily upon the pastor's mind at this time, he had to contend with difficulties of no ordinary nature. The project for a removal to Norfolk Island was now ripening; and he who had educated so many members of the community, and had held such various offices amongst them, was naturally looked up to for advice and counsel. The bias of his judgment had, from the first, been in favour of a transfer to a more roomy spot. Baron de Thierry,* and others personally acquainted with Pitcairn, had represented to him, in vivid colours, the calamities which appeared too surely to impend over the island, with an increasing population, a diminishing quantity of food, and a precarious supply of indifferent water, which another landslip might cut off altogether.
∗ In a letter dated Honolulu, Sandwich Islands, June 15, 1852.
What a helpless position, humanly speaking, with nothing to attract shipping out of its usual course, no trade, no harbour, no means of repair, nothing but exposure and danger! Still the plan of a removal from home, a place to which the people were so fondly attached, the pastor knew to be one fraught with peril and trouble. He deemed, indeed, that the evil would, if let alone, become, like any other disease, mischievous by delay and neglect; but, as a wise and skilful adviser, he declined pressing upon any one an operation which could not be contemplated without pain.
Signs and shadows of coming events had then appeared. The notes of the singing-birds were no longer heard. "The birds," said he "have forsaken us." All the families were then, in fact, about to take their leave of a spot full of deep interest to them, for a new, strange, and distant place of residence.
Of Norfolk Island, and its present inhabitants, the author will have more to say presently, but he will first communicate some further intelligence in connexion with their late position at Pitcairn.