PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



had seen there people who did eat their wives and other 

 relatives, in place of consigning them to tombs, which did not 

 so much surprise me, seeing that the same thing has been 

 related of the ancients.' Quiros commenced life as a common 

 sailor, and became an admiral. Torres, who gave his name to 

 the Australian Straits, was Quiros's lietitenant, and Torque- 

 mada his historian. This ' man in the wine-shop ' died in 

 obscurity in Panama. 



Eoggewein, who discovered Samoa, was imprisoned in Ba- 

 tavia, and died in wretchedness. 



Of Cook's sad end I need not speak. 



The French circumnavigator, M. de la Perouse, perished off 

 the island of Vanikoro, one of the Santa Cruz group ; while 

 Dumont D'Urville, the Polynesian naturalist and traveller, 

 was burnt to death on the Paris and Versailles railway. 



To these men, and many others who seem to have given 

 their lives for the Pacific, we owe a deep debt of gratitude, 

 for they serve, though dead, as finger-posts to a world of 

 wealth. 



Spain is no longer a colonising power, and though the dis- 

 covery of the Pacific is due to the Latin race, the utilisation 

 of that discovery will almost certainly be the work of the 

 Anglo-Saxon. 



With the hope of assisting in that work, morally and com- 

 mercially, I have written 'Coral Lands.' 



