even men to navigate her
as his tender. For the first few weeks, while the scent was keen, he
maintained a very active search for the _Bounty_. He had three clues:
first, the mention of Aitutaki in a story the mutineers had told the
natives to account for their reappearance; second, a report made to him
by Hillbrant, one of his prisoners, that Christian, on the night before
he left Tahiti, had declared his intention of settling on Duke of York's
Island; and third, the discovery on Palmerston Island of the _Bounty's_
driver yard, much worm-eaten from long immersion. It must be confessed
that hopes founded on these clues did little credit to Edwards'
intelligence. Aitutaki, having been discovered by Bligh, was the last
place Christian would have chosen: he might have guessed that a man of
Christian's intelligence would intentionally have given a false account
of his projects to the mutineers he left behind, knowing that even if all
who were set adrift in the boat had perished, the story of the mutiny
would be learned by the first ship that visited Tahiti; a worm-eaten spar
lying on the tide-mark, at an island situated directly down-wind from the
Society Islands, so far from proving that the _Bounty_ had been there,
indicated the exact contrary. But it is to be remembered that at this
time the islands known to exist in the Pacific could almost be counted on
the fingers, and that Edwards could not have hoped, within the limits of
a single cruise, to examine even the half of those that were marked in
his chart. Had he suspected the existence of the vast number of islands
around him, he would at once have realised the hopelessness of attempting
to discover the hiding-place of an able navigator bent on concealment.
Whether, as has been suggested by one writer,[10-1] Christian was piloted
to Pitcairn by his Tahitian companions, of whom some were descended from
the old native inhabitants, or had read of it in Carteret's voyage in
1767, or had chanced upon it by accident, he could have followed no wiser
course than to steer eastward, and upwind, for any vessel despatched to
arrest him would perforce go first to Tahiti for information, when it
would be too late to beat to the eastward without immense loss of time.

From Aitutaki Edwards bore north-west to investigate the second clue, and
in the Union Group he made his first important discovery of new
land--Nukunono, inhabited by a branch of the Micronesian race, crossed
with Polyne