sovereign, and do not recognize the names given in his self-assumed sponsorship
by the English captain. For example, the very dignified appellations
of Buckland and Stapleton, with which Beeehey has honored two islands of
the northern group, are quite ignored by the inhabitants, who speak of these
Places respectively as Goat and Hog islands. When the Engli.l, visited
and took possession of the Bonins, the date of the visit and the act of appropriation
were duly engraved upon a copper plate which was nailed to a
tree, but the plate and the tree are no longer there, and the only evidence
of British possession is the occasional hoisting of the English flag on one
of the neighboring hills, a duty that was originally delegated to a wandering
Englishman who chanced to be on the spot. I t is now considered merely a
signal to be hoisted on the arrival of a vessel. No government is recognized
by the inhabitants, who declare that they have no need of any foreign control,
as they can take good care of themselves.
In the year following the visit of Captain Beeehey, a Captain Lutke of
the Kussian navy arrived, and went through very much the same ceremony
of taking possession and of otherwise appropriating as his English predecessor.
I t is quite clear that the Japanese were the first discoverers of these
islands. They probably settled and then subsequently abandoned them I t
is possible that the early Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch navigators may
have been acquainted with the Bonins, and in later years they have been
visited occasionally by the Americans, English and Russians. The fact of
a Spanish visit would seem to be proved by the name of Arzobispo or Archbishop,
by which the islands are sometimes distinguished. One of the inhabitants
reported that he recollected, on his arrival on the spot, that there
was a board on a tree which recorded the first Russian visit. Neither of
the European nations have as yet made any attempt at colonization.
In 1830, several Americans and Europeans came to the Bonins from the
Sandwich Islands, accompanied by various natives—men and women of
that country.
The leaders of this adventure were five men, two originally from the
United States—Nathaniel Savory and Aldin B. Chapin, of Massachusetts-
one from England of the name of Richard Mildtchamp, one, Charles Johnson,
of Denmark, and the fifth a Genoese known as Mattheo Mazara. The
only one of these remaining on the island during the visit of Commodore
Perry was Nathaniel Savory, an American. Mildtchamp still survives, but
has taken up his residence at Guam, one of the Ladrone Islands. The
Genoese, Mazara, is dead, and Savory has married his widow, a pretty and
young native of Guam, by whom he has offspring. Savory occupies himself
with the culture of a little farm, which is tolerably productive. He also
carries on a trade in sweet potatoes of his own raising and in a rum of his
own distillation from sugar cane, with the whaling ships which frequent the
place ; and he had prosecuted his business with such success as to accumu