E-text prepared by Brendan Lane, Robert Prince,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
WHITE SHADOWS IN THE SOUTH SEAS
BY
FREDERICK O'BRIEN
WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
T. Werner Laurie, Ltd.
1919
FOREWORD
There is in the nature of every man, I firmly believe, a longing tosee and know the strange places of the world. Life imprisons us allin its coil of circumstance, and the dreams of romance that colorboyhood are forgotten, but they do not die. They stir at the sightof a white-sailed ship beating out to the wide sea; the smell oftarred rope on a blackened wharf, or the touch of the cool littlebreeze that rises when the stars come out will waken them again.Somewhere over the rim of the world lies romance, and every heartyearns to go and find it.
It is not given to every man to start on the quest of the rainbow'send. Such fantastic pursuit is not for him who is bound by ties ofhome and duty and fortune-to-make. He has other adventure at his owndoor, sterner fights to wage, and, perhaps, higher rewards to gain.Still, the ledgers close sometimes on a sigh, and by the cosiestfireside one will see in the coals pictures that have nothing to dowith wedding rings or balances at the bank.
It is for those who stay at home yet dream of foreign places that Ihave written this book, a record of one happy year spent among thesimple, friendly cannibals of Atuona valley, on the island ofHiva-oa in the Marquesas. In its pages there is little of profoundresearch, nothing, I fear, to startle the anthropologist or torevise encyclopedias; such expectation was far from my thoughts whenI sailed from Papeite on the Morning Star. I went to see what Ishould see, and to learn whatever should be taught me by the days asthey came. What I saw and what I learned the reader will see andlearn, and no more.
Days, like people, give more when they are approached in not toostern a spirit. So I traveled lightly, without the heavy baggage ofthe ponderous-minded scholar, and the reader who embarks with me onthe “long cruise” need bring with him only an open mind and a lovefor the strange and picturesque. He will come back, I hope, as I did,with some glimpses into the primitive customs of the long-forgottenancestors of the white race, a deeper wonder at the mysteries of theworld, and a memory of sun-steeped days on white beaches, of palmsand orchids and the childlike savage peoples who live in thebread-fruit groves of “Bloody Hiva-oa.”
The author desires to express here his thanks to Rose Wilder Lane,to whose editorial assistance the publication of this book is verylargely due.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
Farewell to Papeite beach; at sea in the Morning Star; Darwin'stheory of the continent that sank beneath the waters of the SouthSeas
CHAPTER II
The trade-room of the Morning Star; Lying Bill Pincher;M. L'Hermier des Plantes, future governor of the Marquesas;story of McHenry and the little native boy, His Dog
CHAPTER III
Thirty-seven days at sea; life of