ry both for service and
health: by early attention to those particulars I had as much as lay in
my power, provided against any accident, in case I could not get through
Endeavour Straits, as well as against what might befall me in them; add
to this the plants had been successfully preserved in the most
flourishing state: so that upon the whole the voyage was two-thirds
completed, and the remaining part to all appearance in a very promising
way; every person on board being in perfect health, to establish which
was ever amongst the principal objects of my attention.

It will very naturally be asked what could be the reason for such a
revolt? in answer to which I can only conjecture that the mutineers had
flattered themselves with the hopes of a more happy life among the
Otaheiteans than they could possibly enjoy in England; and this, joined
to some female connections, most probably occasioned the whole
transaction.

The women at Otaheite are handsome, mild and cheerful in their manners
and conversation, possessed of great sensibility, and have sufficient
delicacy to make them admired and beloved. The chiefs were so much
attached to our people that they rather encouraged their stay among them
than otherwise, and even made them promises of large possessions. Under
these and many other attendant circumstances equally desirable it is now
perhaps not so much to be wondered at, though scarcely possible to have
been foreseen, that a set of sailors, most of them void of connections,
should be led away; especially when, in addition to such powerful
inducements, they imagined it in their power to fix themselves in the
midst of plenty on one of the finest islands in the world, where they
need not labour, and where the allurements of dissipation are beyond
anything that can be conceived. The utmost however that any commander
could have supposed to have happened is that some of the people would
have been tempted to desert. But, if it should be asserted that a
commander is to guard against an act of mutiny and piracy in his own ship
more than by the common rules of service, it is as much as to say that he
must sleep locked up and when awake be girded with pistols.

Desertions have happened more or less from most of the ships that have
been at the Society Islands; but it has always been in the commanders
power to make the chiefs return their people: the knowledge therefore
that it was unsafe to desert perhaps first led mine to conside