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.