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 p

FORTY days in the great desert of the sea,—forty nights camped under cloud canopies, with the salt dust of the waves drifting over us. Sometimes a Bedouin sail flashed for an hour upon the distant horizon, and then faded, and we were alone again; sometimes the west, at sunset, looked like a city with towers, and we bore down upon its glorified walls, seeking a haven; but a cold grey morning dispelled the illusion, and our hearts sank back into the illimitable sea, breathing a long prayer for del

THERE was a little brown rain-cloud, that blew over in about three minutes; and Bolabola's thatched hut was dry as a hay-stack in less than half that time. Those tropical sprays are not much, anyhow; so I lounged down into the banana-patch, for I thought I saw something white there, something white and fluttering, moving about. I knew pretty well what it was, and didn't go after it on an uncertainty. The Doctor looked savage. Whenever he slung those saddle-bags over his left shoulder, and swung

IT was on one of those vagabond pilgrimages to nowhere in particular, such as every stranger is bound to make in a strange land, that I first stumbled upon my royal Jester, better known in Tahiti as Taboo. Great Jove! what a night it was! A wild ravine full of banyan and pandanus trees, and of parasite climbers, and the thousand nameless leafing and blossoming creatures that intermarry to such an alarming extent in the free-loving tropics, had tempted me to pasture there for a little while. I wa

I WAS stormed in at Lahaina. Now, Lahaina is a little slice of civilization, beached on the shore of barbarism. One can easily stand that little of it, for brown and brawny heathendom becomes more wonderful and captivating by contrast. So I was glad of dear, drowsy, little Lahaina; and was glad, also, that she had but one broad street, which possibly led to destruction, and yet looked lovely in the distance. It didn't matter to me that the one broad street had but one side to it; for the sea lap

THE afternoon sun was tinting the snowy crest of Mauna Kea, and folds of shadow were draping the sea-washed eastern cliffs of Hawaii, as Felix and I endeavoured to persuade our fagged steeds that they must go and live, or stay and die in the middle of a lava-trail by no means inviting. As we rode, we thought of the scandal that had so recently regaled our too willing ears: here it is, in a mild solution, to be taken with three parts of disbelief. Two venerable and warm-hearted missionaries, whos

THE "Great Western" ducked in the heavy swell, shipping her regular deck-load of salt-water every six minutes. Now the "Great Western" was nothing more nor than a seventeen-ton schooner, two hours out from Tahiti. She was built like an old shoe, and shovelled in a head-sea as though it was her business. It was something like sea life, wading along her submerged deck from morning till night, with a piece of raw junk in one hand and a briny biscuit in the other; we never could keep a fire in that

THINK of a sea and a sky of such even and utter blueness that any visible horizon is out of the question. In the midst of this pellucid sphere the smallest of propellers trailing two plumes of sea-foam, like the tail-feathers of a bird of paradise, and over it all a league of floating crape,—for so seem the heavy folds of smoke that hang above us. Thus we pass out of our long hours of idleness in that grove of eight thousand cocoa-palms by the sea-shore,—the artist and I seeking to renew our dol

IF you can buy a canoe for two calico shirts, what will your annual expenses in Tahiti amount to? This was a mental problem I concluded to solve, and, having invested my two shirts, I began the solution in this wise: My slender little treasure lay with half its length on shore, and being quite big enough for two, I looked about me, seeking some one to sit in the bows, for company and ballast. Up and down the shady beach of Papeete I wandered, with this advertisement written all over my anxious f

AT Kahakuloa, under a terrific hill and close upon a frothing tongue of the sea, I draw rein. The act is simply a formality of mine; probably the animal would have paused here of his own free will, for he has been rehearsing his stops a whole hour back, during which time he limped somewhat and reaped determinedly the few tufts of dry grass that Nature had provided him by the trail-side. The clouds are falling; the cliffs are festooned with damp gauze; the air is moist and cool; a grass hut of un

HIGH in her lady's chamber sat Gail, looking with calm eyes through the budding maples across the hills of spring. Her letter was but half finished, and the village post was even then ready; so she woke out of her reverie, and ended the writing as follows:— "S PRING ,——. "I know not where you may be at this moment,—living with what South-Sea Island god, drinking the milk of cocoanut, and eating bread-fruit,—but wherever you are, forget not your promise to come home again, bringing your sheaves w

MY Hawaiian oracle, Kahéle, having posed himself in compact and chubby grace, awaited his golden opportunity, which was not long a-coming. I sat on the steps of L——'s verandah, and yawned frightfully, because life was growing tedious, and I did not know exactly what to do next. L——'s house was set in the nicest kind of climate, at the foot of a great mountain, just at that altitude where the hot air stopped dancing, though it was never cool enough to shut a door, or to think of wearing a hat for

OH, the long suffering of him who threads a narrow trail over the brown crust of a hill where the short grass lies flat in tropical sunshine! On one side sleeps the blue, monotonous sea; on the other, crags clothe themselves in cool mist and look dreamy and solemn. The boy Kahéle, who has no ambition beyond the bit of his foot-sore mustang, lags behind, taking all the dust with commendable resignation. As for me, I am wet through with the last shower; I steam in the fierce noonday heat. I spur H

FROM a bluff, whose bald forehead jutted a thousand feet into the air, and under whose chin the sea shrugged its great shoulders, Kahéle, my boy,—that delightful contradiction, who was always plausible, yet never right,—Kahéle and I looked timidly over into the sunset valley of Méha. The "Valley of Solitude" it was called; albeit, at that moment, and with half an eye, we counted the thirty grass-lodges of the village, and heard the liquid tongues of a trio of waterfalls, that dived head-first in

IT was the witching hour of sunset, and we sat at dinner with tearful eyes over the Commodore's curry. You see the Commodore prided himself on the strength of this identical dish, and kept a mahogany-tinted East-Indian steward for the sole sake of his skill in concocting the same. We dined, as usual, in the Commodore's unrivalled Lanai ,—the very thought of which is a kind of spiritual feast to this hour,—and while we sat at his board we heard for the twentieth time the monotonous recital of his

A LITTLE French aspirant de marine , with an incipient moustache, said to me, confidentially, "Where you see the French flag, you see France!" We were pacing to and fro on the deck of a transport that swung at anchor off San Francisco, and, as I looked shoreward for almost the last time,—we were to sail at daybreak for a southern cruise,—I hugged my Ollendorf in despair as I dreamed of "French in six easy lessons," without a master, or a tolerable accent, or anything, save a suggestion of Babel

LET this confession be topped with a vignette done in broad, shadowless lines, and few of them,—something like this:— A little, flyblown room, smelling of garlic; I cooling my elbows on the oily slab of a table (breakfast for one), and looking through a window at a glaring, whitewashed fence high enough to shut out the universe from my point of sight. Yet it hid not all, since it brought into relief a panting cock (with one leg in a string), which had so strained to compress itself into a doubtf

THERE is a bell in a tower in the middle of our Square. At six every morning that bell does its best to tip over in delirious joy, but a dozen strokes with the big tongue of it is about all that is ever accomplished. I like to be wakened by that bell; I like to hear it at meridian when my day's work is nearly done. It is swinging at this very minute, and the iron hammer is bumping its head on either side, wrought with melodious fury. The voice of it is so like the voice of a certain bell I used