South Sea Islands

“ The British Pacific Islands need settlers; young Britons at home are only too ready to adventure themselves. Why do they not? There are several reasons. The first, perhaps, is that neither party can hear the other. In England few possess any information about the South Sea Islands. In the Pacific the white residents (almost all New Zealand traders and Government officials) are possessed with an idea that only wastrels of the worst kind drift out from England to the South Seas, and that nothing better is to be looked for. ”

“ Far away from any other land, in the midst of the South Pacific Ocean, there is a little island, a mere speck in the sea, for it is not six miles across at its widest point. A passing ship might leave this tiny island unnoticed, save for the lofty cliffs and precipices which guard its shores, running down to the white waves, ever curling and breaking at their feet. ”

“ It is an island which is added to the geography of the world. Not only would no child ever doubt of its existence, but to the most experienced reader it is far more true and real than half of those of which we have authentic histories, which our relatives and countrymen have visited and colonized. Those South Sea Islands, about which we have so many flowery volumes, are not half so certain. And every detail of the life of its solitary inhabitant comes up before us like our own personal proceedings—more than visible, incontestable experiences. ”

“ Not a score of them returned to their island homes—the rest perished under the lash and brutality of their cruel taskmasters.
Towards 1870 the demand for South Sea Islanders became very great. They were wanted in the Sandwich Islands, in Tahiti and Samoa; for, naturally enough, with their ample food supply, the natives of these islands do not like plantation work, or if employed demand a high rate of pay. ”

“ The mortality amongst the inhabitants of the South Sea Islands places them in a similar melancholy position with the aborigines of this land, and ere a few years elapse, they will become extinct or amalgamated with emigrants from European shores. ”

“ The very name of the South Seas reeks of adventure and romance. Every boy at school has dreams of coral islands and rakish schooners, sharks, and pearls; most men retain a shamefaced fancy for stories of peril and adventure in that magical South Sea world, of whose charm and beauty every one has heard, although very few are fortunate enough to see it with their own bodily eyes. For the Pacific Islands are, both in point of time and distance, about the remotest spots on the surface of the globe, and they are also among the most costly for the ordinary traveller to reach. ”

“ He was an American sailor, and he had deserted from a man-of-war in Apia. He had induced some good-humoured native to give him a passage on a cutter that happened to be sailing from Apia to Safoto, and he had been put ashore here in a dugout. I do not know why he deserted. Perhaps life on a man-of-war with its restrictions irked him, perhaps he was in trouble, and perhaps it was the South Seas and these romantic islands that got into his bones. Every now and then they take a man strangely, and he finds himself like a fly in a spider's web. ”

“ On the morning of the 29th of September, which was the last of our remaining in Comptroller's Bay, I made another excursion to the Typee Bay, taking with me the chief of the Happahs, who was very anxious to go. I wondered at this, as the tribes evinced so much dislike to each other; but afterwards saw, in my intercourse with the natives of the South Sea Islands, that uncivilized men are capable of as much duplicity towards each other as the educated and refined. ”

“ The result is that at the present date young Englishmen by the hundred are losing their small capital as “pupils” on Canadian farms, or are starving on the roads in South Africa, while all the time the South Sea Islands hold out hands of peace and plenty, begging humbly for a respectable white population. The brown races are dying out with fearful rapidity; at their best they never touched the limitless capacities of the golden Pacific soil. Its richness has always seemed to the original inhabitants an excellent reason for abstaining from cultivation. ”

“ When it has been decided that they shall go to war, the natives of the South-Sea islands commence their preparations with human sacrifices to the god of war. After many strange, bloody, and superstitious rites, the warriors arm themselves and prepare for the fight. ”

“ But I think it is possible that the English reader might gather from this little book an unduly strong impression of the uniformity of Island life. The loves of white men and brown women, often cynical and brutal, sometimes exquisitely tender and pathetic, necessarily fill a large space in any true picture of the South Sea Islands, and Mr. Becke, no doubt of set artistic purpose, has confined himself in the collection of tales now offered almost entirely to this facet of the life. ”

“ Distant islands, ledges of barren reef, leaped forward with an effect of magic, as though our atom of a vessel, the only sail which relieved the emptiness of the sea, had been swept in an instant to within a few yards of the surf. Great combers, green and ominous looking in the sunlight, broke at one rapidly advancing point, toppled and fell in segments, filling the inner shallows with a smother of foam. Beyond it lay the broad fringe of white, deserted beach, the narrow forest of shrub and palm, the empty lagoon, a border of misty islands on the farther side. ”

“ Henry has gone to the wheel, and sits gazing at the stars and singing South Sea songs—now of Samoa, now of Hawaii, and now of Tahiti, taking me back to the good times we had in those islands. The Snark really needs no steering to-night, but someone must be at the wheel.
And this is my last of the South Seas for perhaps a long time, perhaps forever. Those tall cocoanut trees on Rennell, which we can plainly see, are the last links of the islands. The next trees we see will be of the white man's country. ”

“ Though there is no pass, the surf at high tide breaches over the gaps between the islands. The largest island is only a mile and a half long, and none of them are more than half a mile across. Dotted about the surface of the lagoon are a number of motu—tiny islets—each with its flock of sea fowl, its clump of palms, and shining beach of coral sand. Set in a lonely stretch of the Pacific, the place is almost cut off from communication with the outside world; twice or three times in the course of a year a trading schooner calls to leave supplies and take off copra. ”

“ Oceanic islands are due to various causes. It is a question whether the numberless islands of the Malay Archipelago should be regarded as continental or oceanic, but there is no doubt that the South Sea islands scattered over a portion of the Pacific belong to the oceanic group. The ocean floor is by no means a level plain, but rises and falls in mounds, eminences and basins towards the surface. ”

“ After touching at some of the South Sea islands, he proceeded northwards, and discovered the group which he named the Sandwich Islands; hence proceeding to the northwest coast of America, he traced along all that coast, as far as latitude 74°, where their progress was stopped by an impenetrable mass of ice, extending between the north-east point of Asia and the north-west point of America. ”

“ The Sea about them in the neighbourhood of which they always live supplys them with vast variety of fish better than what is generaly met with between the tropicks, but these they get not without some trouble; every one desires to have them and there is not enough for all, tho while we remaind in these seas we saw above species more perhaps than our own Island can boast of. I speak now only of what is more properly calld Fish ”

“ Men wandered about, looking at the women who sat at their windows, reading or sewing, for the most part taking no notice of the passers-by; and like the women they were of all nationalities. There were Americans, sailors from the ships in port, enlisted men off the gunboats, sombrely drunk, and soldiers from the regiments, white and black, quartered on the island; there were Japanese, walking in twos and threes; Hawaiians, Chinese in long robes, and Filipinos in preposterous hats. ”

“ When corallines (as they are called) set about building an island, they lay the foundation on the top of a submarine mountain. The ordinary islands of the sea are neither more nor less than the tops of those mountains which rise from the bottom of the sea and project above the surface. Some of these sea-mountains rise high above the surface and form large islands; some only peep, so to speak, out of the waves, thus forming small islands; others again do not rise to the surface at all—their highest peaks being several feet below the level of the ocean. ”

“ There are certain parts of the world—like our American mountains, deserts, and lonely stretches of coast—which seem planned for the spiritual refreshment of mankind; places from which one carries away a new serenity and the sense of a yearning for beauty satisfied. Ever since the days of Cook the islands of the South Sea have charmed the white man—explorers, naturalists, traders, and the rough crews of whaling vessels ”

“ Religion has been in ages, is still in all Countreys Cloak'd in mysteries unexplicable to human understanding. In the South Sea Islands it has still another disadvantage to present to any one who has a desire to investigate it--the Language in which it is conveyd, at least many words of it, are different from those usd in common conversation, so that tho Tupia often shewd the greatest desire to instruct us in it he found it almost impossible ”

“ They passed two or three trim bungalows, and a tennis court, and then they came to the quay with its warehouses. Mrs Davidson pointed out the schooner, moored two or three hundred yards from the side, which was to take them to Apia. There was a crowd of eager, noisy, and good-humoured natives come from all parts of the island, some from curiosity, others to barter with the travellers on their way to Sydney; and they brought pineapples and huge bunches of bananas, tapa cloths, necklaces of shells or sharks' teeth, kava-bowls, and models of war canoes. ”

“ But I daresay he had no more soul than the creatures of the woods and forests who made pipes from reeds and bathed in the mountain streams when the world was young, and you might catch sight of little fawns galloping through the glade on the back of a bearded centaur. A soul is a troublesome possession and when man developed it he lost the Garden of Eden."
"Well, when Red came to the island it had recently been visited by one of those epidemics which the white man has brought to the South Seas, and one third of the inhabitants had died. ”

“ While sailing along the shores of New Ireland, a violent shock of earthquake occurred, and the sea was greatly agitated, causing the ship to roll heavily. Slight shocks are almost of daily occurrence.
The people of all this group of islands are exceedingly interesting as ethnological studies. They are amongst the most intelligent of the South Sea islanders, and display great ingenuity in ornamenting their spears, clubs, and other weapons, as well as they canoes. ”

“ The busy corallines before mentioned are so numerous in the South Seas that they build their coral walls everywhere. As they have an objection apparently to commence building in shallow water, they are obliged to keep off the shore a distance of a mile or more, so that when they reach the surface they enclose a belt of water of that width, which is guarded by the reef from the violence of the waves, and forms a splendid natural harbour. Almost every South-Sea island has its coral reef round it, and its harbour of still water between the reef and the shore. ”

“ All the islands of the South Sea are more or less formed of coral reefs, which make secure harbours; the Navigators' Islands only are not indebted to these active little animals for this advantage. We sailed round all their coasts, and could find but one open bay, which runs far inland in the island of Maouna, opposite the small island already noticed off its north-east point. ”

“ All the Islands I have seen are very populous all along the sea coast, where are generaly large flats coverd with a vast many breadfruit and Cocoa nut trees. Here are houses almost every 50 yards with their little plantations of Plantains, the tree that makes their cloth etc. ”

“ The expedition was well supplied with everything that might conduce to its success, or to the comfort of those engaged in it, and many useful articles were put on board to be given to the South-Sea islanders, with a view to improve their condition—among other things, some live-stock, which, it was hoped, would multiply on the islands—such as a bull, and two cows with their calves, and some sheep; besides a quantity of such European garden seeds as were likely to thrive in those regions. ”

“ We ought to figure their country to ourselves as one extensive forest: They have only begun to clear and plant a few insulated spots, which are lost in it, like small islands in the vast Pacific Ocean. Perhaps if we could ever penetrate through the darkness which involves the history of this nation, we might find that they have arrived in the South Sea much later than the natives of the Friendly and Society Isles. ”