On Board "Kawa"
Peck's Slip, N.Y.
July 21, 1922.Don Marquis, Esq.
Park Row,
New York City.Dear Sir:—
A number of my friends have called my attention to recent remarks published over your signature which by insinuation cast a veil of ambiguity over my identity. I am not used to having veils cast over me and I resent the practice.
"Who is this person, Traprock?" you ask. "Has he ever been to the North Pole?"
Let the ice-bergs answer! Let the Polar-pack groan its reply. I scorn to.
You also ask if by any chance I discovered three fingers frozen to the Pole. I did find three fingers not frozen to the Pole, but preserved in an otherwise empty gin bottle. They were cached in a rude cairn, mute memorials of some brave man who had ventured north of eighty-six. Of course I at once thought of my friend Fitzurse. Could they be his? The nails were not black enough, but I could not be sure.
I took them with me to the Pole, purposing to leave them with my records, but my plans were modified by the extraordinary attraction which the fingers had for Ikik, Snak and Yalok, three Eskimo women whom I found living at the Pole, or to be exact, under it.
How, finally, to preserve peace I divided the fingers giving one to each to wear as a talisman is an enlivening memory. A few days later, noticing that Ikik was not wearing her finger I questioned her as to its whereabouts. "Me eat" she said. The others had done likewise. I trust that any doubts you may have had in regard to my identity etc. will be dissipated by these circumstantial details.
Yours,
Walter E. Traprock
The
Cruise of the Kawa
By
Dr. Walter E. Traprock,
F.R.S.S. E.U.
A delicious literary burlesque—superlatively amusing. Here are found the wak-wak, that horrid super-seamonster; the gallant fatu-liva birds who lay square eggs; the flowing hoopa bowl, and the sensuous nabiscus plant; the tantalizing, tatooing, fabulous folk music; the beautiful, trusting Filbertine women and their quaint marriage customs, as well as the dread results of the white man's coming—all described with a frank freedom, literary charm and meticulous regard for truth which is delightful.
The Cruise of the Kawa stands unique among the literature of modern exploration. Nothing like it has ever come out of the South Seas. It is the travel book of years. Strikingly illustrated, too, from special photographs, it tells pictorially, as well as verbally, the exciting, amusing and entertaining story of an exploration in the South Seas.
G.P. Putnam's Sons
New York London