PREFACE. 5 



even the sternest fronts made to smile and be glad as delights 

 the gay tropics, and alive with waterfalls, gliding, leaping, or 

 plunging, on their way down from the giddy heights, and, 

 as they go, playing out and in amid the foliage ; of gorges ex- 

 plored, mountains and volcanic cones climbed, and a burning 

 crater penetrated a thousand feet down to its boiling depths ; 

 and, finally, — beyond all these, — of man emerging from the 

 depths of barbarism through christian self-denying, divinely- 

 aided, effort, and churches and school-houses standing as cen- 

 tral objects of interest and influence in a native village. 



On the other hand, there were occasional events not so 

 agreeable. 



Even the beauty of natural objects had, at times, a dark 

 back-ground. When, for example, after a day among the 

 corals, we came, the next morning, upon a group of Fee- 

 jee savages with human bones to their mouths, finishing off 

 the cannibal feast of the night ; and as thoughtless of any im- 

 propriety as if the roast were of wild game taken the day be- 

 fore. In fact, so it was. 



Other regions gave us some harsh scenes. One — that of 

 our vessel, in a tempest, fast drifting toward the rocks of 

 Southern Fuegia, and finding anchorage under Noir Island, 

 but not the hoped-for shelter from either winds or waves ; the 

 sea at the time dashing up the black cliffs two and three hun- 

 dred feet, and shrouding in foam the high rocky islets, half- 

 obscured, that stood about us ; the cables dragging and clank- 

 ing over the bottom ; one breaking ; then another, the storm 

 still raging; finally, after the third day, near midnight, the 

 last of the four cables giving way, amid a deluge of waters 

 over the careering vessel from the breakers astern, and an in- 

 stant of waiting among all on board for the final crash ; then, 

 that instant hardly passed, the loud calm command of the 



