A Yachting Cruise In The South Seas

Published in London in 1875. The author sailed around the South Pacific in 1873 and this is an essay he has recorded of his travels. Very interesting account of life in the South Pacific in 1873.

The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text.

Preface:

During the last eight years I have made several voyages amongst the South Sea Islands; and although so much has been written and re-written about them, I have been induced to publish these few imperfect sketches of my last cruise by the belief that any facts relating to the manners and customs of these islanders, should not be allowed to perish.

In this cruise, I was accompanied by Mr. George Smith as photographic artist, who most ably performed his part, often under the most trying circumstances.

The opportunity of taking portraits of these people in their primitive condition will soon be lost, so rapid is the advance of so-called civilization. It is a melancholy fact, that wherever an English colony is planted, there the inferior race dies out.

The policy that annexes Fiji, tolls the knell of the Polynesian race. Speculative, money-grasping Europeans will now spread themselves over the other islands of the Pacific, being well assured that land bought from the ignorant native will, in due time, be secured to them by the protection of the British flag.

Before these pioneers of civilization, the present self-satisfied, lotus-eating Polynesian, whose character is as plastic as clay, will no doubt rapidly disappear.

And while yet learned ethnologists are differing amongst themselves as to the origin of this most romantic people, it seems by no means improbable that the whole race, leaving no history and no monuments, will have passed away from the face of their Ocean.

Excerpts:

......Here for the first time I saw the giant land crab that feeds on cocoa-nuts; these crabs are considered a great luxury by the natives. Such fearful strength are they possessed of, that there is only one way of keeping them safely, and that is by tying a cord round their waists and suspending them from the roofs of their houses. I being somewhat taller than the average of the natives, found my head several times in dangerous proximity to these animated chandeliers. The natives described to me a method of catching them, which I had often heard of before, but never really believed.

.....It appears that the crab is in the habit of climbing the cocoa-nut trees by night, and biting off a nut, which falls to the ground, when he immediately descends, clambering down backwards, to eat it at his leisure on the ground. Such being his custom, the natives outwit him by tying a wisp of grass round the stems of the trees at a great height from the ground. This the crab does not notice as he ascends, but in coming down backwards, as soon as he feels the wisp of grass he imagines he has reached the ground, lets go his hold, and falls to the bottom, where he is found in the morning by the owner of the tree.

.....The natives are very fond of tame parrots, I purchased a good many from them. Sometimes they will offer opossums for sale, and what at first appears a strange pet, the large vampire bat. This latter, however, makes a very interesting pet, and it would be difficult to find a more affectionate and faithful creature.

.....I rowed over to a small island where I was told a white man lived who had been there thirty years. Go to what island you will where the natives are at all friendly, in one of the first canoes that visits your vessel there will be a white man, or more properly the white man of the island. He and his class have been christened "beachcombers," for as they live on the shore, with no apparent means of support, they are supposed to exist on what the sea may throw up on the beach outside their door.

.....Your beachcomber has a style of dress which generally betrays to you that he was once a sailor. It is difficult to judge his age—you may guess anything from fifty to seventy. Dissipation and a tropical climate account for his withered appearance. He will generally be tatooed after the manner of the people with whom he has taken up his abode. He has sunk to the social and moral level of the natives, and has exceeded them in their vices. If he live amongst a kava-drinking people his eyes will be red and weak from an abuse of that preparation, and he will in all probability be suffering from hydrocele or elephantiasis. Give him a glass of grog and he becomes frank and friendly, probably in expectation of more. In fact, he only comes in the same spirit...........