of Teuchira, Ptolemeta, Cyrene, and Apollonia; discovered the troglodytes, or inhabitants of caves[1]; completed the exploration of an extensive tract of coast which had been hitherto unsurveyed; and made drawings of every object of note which presented itself on the field of their operations. Circumstances, however, prevented their going further eastward than Derna, and limited the period of their stay in the Pentapolis to a much shorter period than they had originally expected. On the 25th of July, 1822, they embarked at Bengazi on board a bullock-vessel bound to Malta; and from thence returned to England.
Some time previous to his departure from Africa, Mr. Frederick W. Beechey had been promoted to the rank of commander; and on the 12th of Jan. 1825, he was appointed to the Blossom sloop, fitting out for a voyage to the Pacific and Behring’s Strait, to co-operate with the polar expeditions under Captains Parry and Franklin. During his absence from England, a period of three years and a half, he sailed 73,000 miles, and experienced every vicissitude of climate.
After touching at Teneriffe, Rio Janeiro, Conception, Valparaiso, and Easter Island (where a native chief appears to have been shot whilst heading his people in an attack upon the boats of the Blossom), Commander Beechey surveyed Ducie’s and Elizabeth Islands, the latter of which he found “differed essentially from all others in its vicinity, and belonged to a peculiar formation.” He then proceeded to Pitcairn’s Island, now well known to the world as the last refuge of the mutineers of the Bounty, the details of whose extraordinary history we first made public, in the years 1825 and 1827[2]. Speaking of their descendants, he says:–
