CONTENTS
| Prologue | [3] | |
| I. | Introducing Nagapate | [6] |
| II. | Sydney and New Caledonia | [23] |
| III. | The Threshold of Cannibal-Land | [39] |
| IV. | Nagapate comes to call | [49] |
| V. | In Nagapate’s Kingdom | [71] |
| VI. | The Big Numbers see themselves on the Screen | [94] |
| VII. | The Noble Savage | [100] |
| VIII. | Good-bye to Nagapate | [116] |
| IX. | The Monkey People | [123] |
| X. | The Dance of the Painted Savages | [138] |
| XI. | Tomman and the Head-Curing Art | [152] |
| XII. | The White Man in the South Seas | [161] |
| XIII. | Espiritu Santo and a Cannibal Feast | [175] |
ILLUSTRATIONS
| Men of Espiritu Santo | [Frontispiece] |
| The Watcher of Tanemarou Bay | [14] |
| Nagapate | [18] |
| A Beach Scene | [24] |
| Looking Seaward | [36] |
| Dance of Tethlong’s Men | [46] |
| A Call from Nagapate | [62] |
| The Safe Beach Trail, Tanemarou Bay | [68] |
| Looking over Nagapate’s Kingdom from the Highest Peak in Northern Malekula | [74] |
| Women of the Big Numbers | [78] |
| Rambi | [84] |
| Atree and Nagapate | [88] |
| Hunting for the Magic | [98] |
| A Cannibal and a Kodak | [98] |
| Nagapate among the Devil-Devils | [110] |
| One of the Monkey Men | [128] |
| Wo-bang-an-ar | [134] |
| Southwest Bay | [138] |
| Woman and Child of the Long-Heads, Tomman | [142] |
| The Painted Dancers of Southwest Bay | [148] |
| The Old Head-Curer | [154] |
| A Club-House in Tomman with Mummied Heads and Bodies | [158] |
| Tomman Women, showing Gap in Teeth | [162] |
| Dwarfs of Espiritu Santo | [182] |
| The Cannibal Dance | [188] |
CANNIBAL-LAND
PROLOGUE
Twelve years ago, from the deck of the Snark, I had my first glimpse of the New Hebrides.
I was standing my trick at the wheel. Jack London and his wife, Charmian, were beside me. It was just dawn. Slowly, out of the morning mists, an island took shape. The little ship rose and sank on the Pacific swell. The salt breeze ruffled my hair. I played my trick calmly and in silence, but my heart beat fast at the sight of that bit of land coming up like magic out of the gray water.
For I knew that of all the groups in the South Seas, the New Hebrides were held to be the wildest. They were inhabited by the fiercest of cannibals. On many of the islands, white men had scarcely trod. Vast, unknown areas remained to be explored. I thrilled at the thought of facing danger in the haunts of savage men.
I was young then. But my longing for adventure in primitive lands has never left me. News of a wild country, of unvisited tribes, still thrills me and makes me restless to be off in some old South Seas schooner, seeing life as it was lived in Europe in the Stone Age and is still lived in out-of-the-way corners of the earth that civilization has overlooked.