a man of great landed property near Matavai Bay.  This intelligence, no doubt, weighed with the Captain in giving his orders for the close confinement of the prisoners; and particularly in restricting the visits of the natives; but so far is it from being true that all communication between the mutineers and the natives was cut off, that we are distinctly told by Mr. Hamilton, that ‘the prisoners’ wives visited the ship daily, and brought their children, who were permitted to be carried to their unhappy fathers.  To see the poor captives in irons,’ he says, ’weeping over their tender offspring, was too moving a scene for any feeling heart, Their wives brought them ample supplies of every delicacy that the country afforded, while we lay there, and behaved with the greatest fidelity and affection to them.’[15]

Of the fidelity and attachment of these simple-minded creatures an instance is afforded in the affecting story which is told, in the first Missionary Voyage of the Duff, of the unfortunate wife of the reputed mutineer Mr. Stewart.  It would seem also to exonerate Edwards from some part of the charges which have been brought against him.

’The history of Peggy Stewart marks a tenderness of heart that never will be heard without emotion:  she was the daughter of a chief, and taken for his wife by Mr. Stewart, one of the unhappy mutineers.  They had lived with the old chief in the most tender state of endearment; a beautiful little girl had been the fruit of their union, and was at the breast when the Pandora arrived, seized the criminals, and secured them in irons on board the ship.  Frantic with grief, the unhappy Peggy (for so he had named her) flew with her infant in a canoe to the arms of her husband.  The interview was so affecting and afflicting, that the officers on board were overwhelmed with anguish, and Stewart himself, unable to bear the heartrending scene, begged she might not be admitted again on board.  She was separated from him by violence, and conveyed on shore in a state of despair and grief too big for utterance.  Withheld from him, and forbidden to come any more on board, she sunk into the deepest dejection; it preyed on her vitals; she lost all relish for food and life, rejoiced no more, pined under a rapid decay of two months, and fell a victim to her feelings, dying literally of a broken heart.  Her child is yet alive, and the tender object of our care, having been brought up by a sister, who nursed it as her own, and has discharged all the duties of an affectionate mother to the orphan infant.’[16]

It does not appear that young Heywood formed any matrimonial engagement during his abode in Otaheite.  He was not, however, insensible to the amiable and good qualities of these people.  In some laudatory verses which he wrote while on the island, their numerous good qualities are spoken of in terms of the highest commendation.