·SUMMER CRUISING IN
THE SOUTH SEAS·

BY
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD



A NEW IMPRESSION


LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1905

PREFACE.

THE experiences recorded in this volume are the result of four summer cruises among the islands of the Pacific.

The simple and natural life of the islander beguiles me; I am at home with him; all the rites of savagedom find a responsive echo in my heart; it is as though I recollected something long forgotten; it is like a dream dimly remembered, and at last realized; it must be that the untamed spirit of some aboriginal ancestor quickens my blood.

I have sought to reproduce the atmosphere of a people who are wonderfully imaginative and emotional; they nourish the first symptoms of an affinity, and revel in the freshness of an affection as brief and blissful as a honeymoon.

With them "love is enough," and it is not necessarily one with the sexual passion: their life is sensuous and picturesque, and is incapable of a true interpretation unless viewed from their own standpoint.

To them our civilization is a cross, the blessed promises of which are scarcely sufficient to compensate for the pain of bearing it, and they are inclined to look upon our backslidings with a spirit of profound forbearance.

Among them no laws are valid save Nature's own, but they abide faithfully by these.

His lordship's threadbare New Zealander sitting upon a crumbling arch of London Bridge, recently restored, and finding too late that he had forestalled his mission, would know my feelings as I offer this plea for his tribe; and any one who instinctively lags in the march of progress, and marks the decay of nature; any one to whom the highly educated grasshopper is a burden, must see that my case is critical.

Yet in imagination I may, at the shortest notice, return to the seagirt arena of my adventures, and restore my unregenerated soul.

Limited flagons cannot stay me, neither will small apples comfort me; I have eaten of the tree of life, my spirit is full-fledged, and when I take wing I feel the earth sinking beneath me; the mountains crumble, the clouds crouch under me, the waters rise and flow out to the horizon; across my breast the sunbeams brush, leaving half their gold behind them; seas upon seas fill up the hollow of the universe; I soar into eternity, blue wastes below me, blue wastes above me. The stars only to mark the upper strata of space.

Day after day I wing my tireless flight, and the past is forgotten in the radiance of the dawning future.

Land at last! A green islet sails within the compass of my vision: land at last! Crumbs of earth, fragments of paradise, litter the broad sea like strewn leaves. A myriad reefs and shoals wreathe the blue hemisphere; the moan of surfs rises like a grand anthem, the fragrance of tropic bowers ascends like incense; I pause in my giddy flight, and sink into the bosom of the dusk.

Sunset transfigures the earth; the woods are rosy with glowing bars of light; long shadows float upon the waves like weeds; gardens of sea grass rock for ever between daylight and darkness, tinted with changeful lights.

I know the songs of those distant lands; there have I sought and found unbroken rest; again I return to you, my beloved South, and after many days of storm and shine, I touch upon your glimmering shores, flushed with the renewal of my passionate love for you.

Again I dive beneath your coral caves; again I thread the sunless depths of your unfading forests; and there, finally, I hope to fold my drooping wings, where the flowers breathe heavily and fountains tinkle within the solitude of your moonlit ivory chambers.

Oh, literary death, where is thy sting, while this happy hunting-ground awaits me!

In the singularly expressive tongue of my barbarian brother,

Aloha oe! Love to you!

CONTENTS.