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When we had buried Mr. Elphinstone, and I had asked the Surgeon-General for writing materials, it was his wife who brought me what I required. She took leave of me soon after; and since night is still distant, I am beginning to set my memories in order for the task with which I hope to while the hours away until I am again able to walk.

Of the mutiny on board His Majesty’s armed transport Bounty, I shall have little to say. Captain Bligh has already written an account of how the ship was seized; and Mr. Timotheus Wanjon, secretary to the governor at Coupang, has translated it into the Dutch language so that the authorities in these parts may be on the lookout for the Bounty in the unlikely event that she should be steered this way. He questioned each of us fully as to what we had seen and heard on the morning of the mutiny; I should be guilty of presumption were I to set down an independent narrative based upon my own knowledge of what occurred. But of our subsequent adventures in the ship’s launch I feel free to write, the more so since Mr. Nelson, the botanist, who informed me at Coupang that he meditated the same task, died in Timor, the first victim of the privations we had undergone.