surfresearch.com.au  bennett : pitcairn island, 1834

---

Frederick Bennett : Pitcairn Island, 1834.

---

Extract from
Bennett, Frederick Debell:
Narrative of a Whaling Voyage Round the Globe, from the year 1833 to 1836.
Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, London, 1840, page 35.

---

The only aboriginal games we noticed among them was one resembling quoits; a second played with black and white stones on a checquer-board, in a manner approaching to chess or draughts; and the pahe, or darting rods along the smooth ground to, or beyond, a determined mark.
Horsemanship is now a favourite exercise with both sexes- the females riding a la fourchette.
They invariably ride at full gallop; and a native peasant, attired in primitive costume, and mounted on the bare back of a steed, bears, in his attitude, his naked and well-proportioned limbs, and his cloth flowing wildly about him, no slight resemblance to an equestrian figure from the antique, executed in bronze. (pages 218-219)

Their children are stout and shrewd little urchins, familiar and confident, but at the same time well behaved.
They are early inured to aquatic exercises; and it amused us not a little to see small creatures, two or three years old, sprawling in the surf which broke upon the beach; their mothers sitting upon the rocks, watching their anticks, and coolly telling them to "come out, or they would be drowned;" whilst the older children, amusing themselves with their surf-boards, would dive out beneath the lofty breakers, and, availing themselves of a succeeding series, approach the coast, borne on the crest of a wave, with a velocity which threatened their instant destruction against the rocks; but, skilfully evading any contact with the shore, they again dived forth to meet and mount another of their foaming steeds.

Bennett, Frederick Debell:  Narrative of a Whaling Voyage  Round the Globe, from the year 1833 to 1836.  Richard Bentley,  New Burlington Street, London, 1840.

surfresearch.com.au

---