PREFACE. 



To introduce the work contained in the succeeding pages would 

 be irksome; it partakes of the nature of a task, for the book must 

 be its own best record of the results of years spent in study in the 

 distant South Seas, of yet other years of intimate toil. But there 

 is pleasure in making a brief and prefatory record of my introduction 

 to these Polynesian researches. 



That I owe to James D wight Dana, not the least distinguished of 

 the scientific staff of the United States Exploring Expedition which, 

 under the naval command of Lieutenant Wilkes, made that brilliant 

 cruise of discovery in the Pacific Oceans between the years 1838 

 and 1842. It was a work of supererogation on the part of my pre- 

 ceptor to answer my questions about the discovery of savage men 

 in the distant sea half around the globe; it formed no part of the 

 studies which I was pursuing under his direction. Yet he was ever 

 cordial; my questions never went unanswered. Thus gradually I 

 acquired a distinctly personal knowledge of the great work which 

 had been done in Polynesia, an intimate acquaintance with men 

 and scenes which serves still to supplement the formal record con- 

 tained in the reports of that historic voyage. 



Not long thereafter, yet it was all of forty years since Dana's day 

 in the bright South Sea, it was granted me to cruise over many of 

 the inter-island courses which he had followed. That my cruises 

 were easy was a debt which I owed to the cartographic work of 

 that expedition ; that they were almost always safe was no less due 

 to the moral effect which |the American voyagers had impressed 

 upon the savages at their first discovery. 



When once I landed on the island of Malolo, remotely set in the 

 Fiji Islands, and found the people coming to the beach to greet me 

 with yams and bamboo tubes of water, it seemed an interesting, 

 somewhat picturesque, ceremony. When I inquired into the reason 

 I learned that it was called an ancient custom to proffer food and 

 water to all visiting strangers. Yet I found that in less than half 

 of a stagnant century a custom had become ancient. It was at 

 Malolo that a boat's crew of the Wilkes expedition had been cut 

 off, as duly set forth in the third volume of the narrative; after 

 exacting punishment for this act of murder the Americans laid the 



