The island

Victoria goes afield, and I return to the house, to smoke with the Ancient, and to interview him on government, arts, and laws. This is what I learn.

Our population, men, women and children, is less than one hundred souls.

Our arts—well, we till the soil, as aforesaid, but in our own way. The plough and the windmill were unknown to us a few years ago. We breed a little stock, and we exchange wool and tallow for flour and biscuit, with passing ships. When a ship comes to us, we grow wild with joy, and it is fête day throughout the island.

We get most things in this way, and our latest transaction in barter was for slate pencils and files, of which we stood much in need. The school was reduced to chalk and the blackboard. For a long time, we were greatly at a loss for wedding rings; and the one ring on the Island had to be lent for each successive ceremony. This want is now supplied.

Coin is a curiosity: we have but two sovereigns, a dozen half-crowns, with a choice assortment of minor pieces, and one fourpenny bit. This last stands under an inverted tumbler, which constitutes our nearest approach to a numismatic museum. The collection might increase, if only the ladies could consent to part with their jewelry, for our few English coins are worn as ornaments. There are American dollars in greater plenty, but the currency is chiefly in potatoes.

We think of raising cotton, which would thrive very well in this latitude, and it is quite possible that, in a few years, we may be no longer dependent on Europe for shirts. It would add much to our sense of dignity, and, beside, would tend to make us more self-supporting, in the event of complications with a foreign power.

We have no navy to speak of, but there is a first-rate whale boat. The steersman of the whale boat is also Magistrate, or Governor of the Island—my host. There is precedent for it: Pitt, I believe, was First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the same time. The Governor is elected annually, by universal suffrage of both sexes.

O that Governor!

He has just laid down his pipe, to fish the Revised Statutes out of the pocket of his pilot coat. ‘We make ’em as we want ’em,’ he says simply, ‘but I hope we shall soon want no more. There’s quite enough already, to my mind.

‘You see, sir, the first is a “Law Respecting the Magistrate” (that’s me, for the present). He’s to carry out the laws, and when there’s any complaint to call the people together and hear both sides. Everyone is to treat him with respect. But they all do, you know, without that,’ his Excellency was pleased to add.

‘Then there’s a “Law Regarding the School.” All children to go; or to pay, whether they go or not. Fee, a barrel of Irish potatoes a year, or thereabouts.’

‘A barrel of Irish potatoes, you see, in our currency, stands for twelve shillings, and the school fee is a shilling a month. A barrel of sweet potatoes is only eight shillings. Three good bunches of plantains make four shillings, and so on.

‘On the 1st of January we visit landmarks, first thing after the election, and see they are all right.

‘Then there’s a law about drinks, sir—as I dare say you know. No strong liquor on the Island, except for physic. You see, we gave liquor a trial when our people first came here, and the man that invented it went funny, and jumped into the sea. It seemed to bring bad luck, so we gave it up.

‘Now we come to our great difficulty,’ and he proceeded to read aloud another chapter of the statutes headed, ‘Laws for Cats.’ ‘Cats, you must know, sir, are very useful in keeping down rats, but our young people will sometimes shoot them for sport, so we’ve been obliged to pass a very severe law, our severest, I may say. There’s a heavy fine for killing a cat, half of it to go to the informer. For all that, it’s no easy matter to settle these cases. Sometimes people say the cat came to kill their fowls; and what are you to do then? It is a difficult case for a magistrate. I always say this—was the cat caught killing the bird; or was it merely a suspicion? If you can’t produce your dead bird, then down with your potatoes! There’s another way; you may pay your fine in rats killed by yourself. Three hundred is the price of a cat’s life; we try to be fair all round.

‘Take fowls again; if a fowl trespasses in your garden, you may shoot it, and the owner must return you your charge of powder and shot. That’s the law as it stands in the book, but nowadays you generally send back the bird, and say no more about it. We are all neighbours, you know.

‘There’s another thing,’ continued his Excellency, pursuing his commentary on the code, ‘You mustn’t carve on trees. Who wants to carve on trees? you may say. Well, the young people, when they are a-courting. But it ruins the timber. We’ve had no end of trouble with that law. As you walk about the Island, sir, you’ll come upon true lovers’ knots, and such like, in the most out of the way places. You mustn’t be startled by ’em, and think it’s savages; it’s just sweethearts, neither more or less. Where we can’t tell which pair was walking there, I draws ’em all up in line, and asks who did it, straight out. Oh, you have to look sharp after things here, I do assure you. Our people are not so wicked, but they get careless sometimes. Who’d ever think, now, that we want a “Law for the Public Anvil”? but we do.’ And he read aloud,

‘“Any person taking the public anvil and public sledge-hammer from the blacksmith’s shop is to take it back after he has done with it; and, in case the anvil and sledge-hammer should get lost, by his neglecting to take it back, he is to get another anvil and sledge-hammer, and pay a fine of four shillings”—potatoes, you know.

‘You’ve got a good many more laws in Europe, I’ve heard say,’ he observed, as he closed his book, and restored the entire code of Pitcairn to his breast pocket.

‘You have not been misinformed,’ I replied. ‘But tell me—have you any machinery of appeal from the decisions of the Court of First Instance?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if they don’t like what I tell ’em, it goes before a jury.’

‘And if they don’t like that any better?’

‘Then we hold over till the next British man-o’-war touches, and the captain decides. We’ve got an appeal waiting now—a cat case. None of us can get to the rights of it, so we must wait: but the parties are friendly enough, meanwhile.’

‘Have you ever carried a case to the House of Lords?’

‘We shouldn’t like to trouble you, sir, thank you, all the same.’