Captain Beechey says, the women have all learned the art of midwifery; that parturition generally takes place during the night-time; that the duration of labour is seldom longer than five hours, and has not yet in any case proved fatal; but there is no instance of twins, nor of a single miscarriage, except from accident.  Infants are generally bathed three times a day in cold water, and are sometimes not weaned for three or four years; but when that does take place, they are fed upon ‘popoe,’ made of ripe plantains and boiled taro-root rubbed into a paste.  Mr. Collie, the surgeon of the Blossom, remarks that nothing is more extraordinary, in the history of the island, than the uniform good health of the children; the teething is easily got over, they have no bowel complaints, and are exempt from those contagious diseases which affect children in large communities.  He offered to vaccinate the children as well as all the grown persons; but they deemed the risk of infection of small-pox to be too small to render that operation necessary.

As a proof how very much simple diet and constant exercise tend to the healthful state of the body, the skin of these people, though in such robust health, compared with that of the Europeans, always felt cold, and their pulses always considerably lower.  The doctor examined several of them:  in the forenoon he found George Young’s only sixty; three others, in the afternoon, after dinner, were sixty-eight, seventy-two, and seventy-six, while those of the officers who stood the heat of the climate best were above eighty.

It is impossible not to feel a deep interest in the welfare of this little society, and at the same time an apprehension that something may happen to disturb that harmony and destroy that simplicity of manners which have hitherto characterized it.  It is to be feared, indeed, that the seeds of discord are already sown.  It appears from Captain Waldegrave’s statement, that no less than three Englishmen have found their way into this happy society.  One of them, John Buffet, mentioned by Beechey, is a harmless man, and, as it has been stated, of great use to the islanders in his capacity of clergyman and schoolmaster; he is also a clever and useful mechanic, as a ship-wright and joiner, and is much beloved by the community.  Two others have since been left on the island, one of them, by name John Evans, son of a coachmaker in the employ of Long of St. Martin’s Lane, who has married a daughter of John Adams, through whom he possesses and cultivates a certain portion of land; the third is George Hunn Nobbs, who calls himself pastor, registrar, and schoolmaster, thus infringing on the privileges of John Buffet; and being a person of superior talents, and of exceeding great impudence, has deprived Buffet of a great number of his scholars; and hence a sufficient cause exists of division and dissension among the members of the little society, which were never known before.  Buffet and Evans support