excerpt from the book..NONE of the minor incidents in our naval history has inspired so manywriters as the Mutiny of the _Bounty_. Histories, biographies andromances, from Bligh's narrative in 1790 to Mr. Becke's "Mutineers" in1898, have been founded upon it; Byron took it for the theme of the leasthappy of his dramatic poems; and all these, not because the mutiny leftany mark upon history, but because it ranks first among the stories ofthe sea, instinct with the living elements of romance, of primal passionand of tragedy--all moving to a happy ending in the Arcadia of PitcairnIsland. And yet, while every incident in the moving story, even to theevidence in the famous court-martial, has been discussed over and overagain, there has been lying in the Record Office for more than a centuryan autograph manuscript, written by one of the principal actors in thedrama, which no one has thought it worth while to print.