tion>Charles Warren Stoddard
Summer Cruising in the South Seas
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066140663
Table of Contents
SUMMER CRUISING IN THE SOUTH SEAS.
PART II. HOW I CONVERTED MY CANNIBAL.
PEARL-HUNTING IN THE POMOTOUS.
THE LAST OF THE GREAT NAVIGATOR.
A CANOE CRUISE IN THE CORAL SEA.
UNDER A GRASS ROOF. A LEAF TORN AT RANDOM FROM A TROPICAL NOTE-BOOK.
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;
