Revised Jun 21 2021
It is the custom on festive occasions, when the captain and his friends from the ship are entertained at dinner, for the women to attend upon the party at table. This is the exception to the general rule: as, usually, when there are no visitors, the men and women in a family sit down together. But the attendance of the females on strangers, and on their own relatives, has been misapprehended by some travellers as a mark of barbarism. Now, there must be some to wait; strangers must be hospitably served; and the younger women do these honours of their island in the most attentive and good-humoured manner. Here, again, the delicacy and good sense of the islanders are to be admired. It will be allowed that for husbands and brothers to be attending upon their female relatives and newly-landed guests, would be a less desirable and becoming mode than that at present adopted.
In March 1850, five passengers of the barque Noble , Captain H. Parker, bound from New Zealand for California, were left by a mischance on Pitcairn; the vessel from which they had landed having been blown off from her place near the island during the night. She was visible the next morning from the shore; all the people watching her movements with intense anxiety. For some reason, however, (probably the state of the weather,) when seeming to approach the island, she suddenly changed her course, sailed away, and left her five passengers behind. During the three weeks of their detention, which turned out to be a very agreeable visit, the strangers, who had no property about them but the clothes which they had on, received every mark of sympathy and friendship. One of these gentlemen, Mr. Walter Brodie, whom Mr. Nobbs entertained as his guest, employed himself chiefly in gathering materials for an account of the island, and its hospitable inhabitants, which was afterwards published, and to which allusion has already been made.