Reprinted from February 24th, 1939. 
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Things as The y Are 
A Keen observer in the South seas 
by ^‘ CRINGLE ” 
D uring the past twenty years or so it has been my 
good fortune to meet quite a number of people, 
some of them close, personal friends, who have gone 
long voyages in small boats. It has also been my fortune, 
not always good, to read most of the books that have 
resulted from those long-distance travellings by sea. 
Nearly always I have found the most interesting people, 
and certainly the most entertaining books, have been the 
result of going to sea with some object beyond mere sail- 
ing. Sometimes, in all truth, those objects have 
been or have sounded fantastic enough. For 
instance, one man was sailing his boat out to 
New Zealand to start a sheep farm. No fewer 
than five have been seeking buried treasure. One, 
with perhaps the most commercial object of the 
lot, was taking ‘‘local colour” films. Two more 
have been looking for islands where they might 
start plantations, as a result of which one came 
home after living on bananas and nothing else 
but bananas for about six months. The other 
had rather better luck, for he was still able to 
sail away from his island leaving a fine pile of 
cans and a nucleus of a cannery, but none of the 
pineapples for which he had hoped. 
Nevertheless, each one of them had some idea 
of making his way. None of them was sailing 
just for the sake of sailing, which, perhaps, means 
that although rebels by nature they were fairly 
normal sort of people, with a normal sort of out- 
look and a clear understanding that wherever 
and however one goes it is extremely difficult to 
find any sort of paradise providing free board and 
lodging. That impression is conhrmed by a new 
book. Led s See if the World is Round, published 
recently by William Hodge, and, moreover, this 
book certainly points the lesson that it is better 
to go to sea with some object in view and not 
just to sail to escape whatever it is most South 
Seas wanderers try to escape. 
Breezy and Cheerful 
This time it is a Danish expedition. Although 
something of the usual urge to go forth in search 
of fortune and adventure was responsible for the 
inception of the expedition, and although the 
organiser, a schoolmaster, said that he was merely 
going to see if the world were really round, as he 
had so often taught, its real object was the collec- 
tion of specimens for museums. 
The book has been written by one member of 
that expedition, Hakon Mielche. It is a high- 
hearted, amusing sort of book, yet extraordinary 
in the fact that no hardened, cynical traveller is 
likely to say “ Bletherskite,” and yet no romantic 
would-be traveller by small boat will feel disil- 
lusioned — only that he has been told the truth. 
The telling is breezy and cheerful, yet is entirely 
convincing, and the author does not debunk the 
South Seas and all the legends that have grown 
up about them so much as reduce them to 
common terms. 
The ship was Monsoon, a ketch, and the course 
of her voyaging took her from Denmark, through 
the Panama to the South Sea Islands, to finish 
in shipwreck on Vani Koro, one of the Santa 
Cruz group. The record of the voyage as told by 
Hakon Mielche is not over-much concerned with ship 
handling, and that is a change, too. It is, however, fine 
reading, with a most excellent impression of places and 
people. Obviously the author has a tolerant mind and a 
discerning eye. Certainly this is one of the best stories of 
deep-sea voyaging, if entertainment is valued. 
And a word for the translator, Mr. M. A. Michael. 
His excellent rendering of the original leaves clear the 
personality of the author. Poetic fancies, occasional 
touches of the brutal and barbaric have been put 
into just the kind of English that suits the story. 
Naturally, the author had something to say of 
such well-publicised personalities as those former 
settlers in the Galapagos. Some of his comments 
indicate the quality of the writing and transla- 
tion and, further, convey something, too, of what 
can happen to people who try to escape civilisa- 
tion. “ The Baroness was small, but one could 
not say that she was beautiful. In front of her 
swollen lids she wore strong spectacles and her 
mouth, though too large, was yet unable to cover 
her long, yellow rabbit teeth. She reminded one 
of a very vicious caricature of Mistinguette. Her 
hanks of hair were kept in place by means of a 
pink shoulder strap round her head, and she wore 
a kind of baby’s rompers, like the trunks the 
ladies of the chorus wear when rehearsing. She 
moved in that hopping manner which jockeys call 
a ‘ canter. ’ . . . 
Paradise ! 
‘ ‘ Such was our entry into the hacienda ‘ Para- 
dise,’ a wooden hut set in the middle of a veget- 
able garden, where a powerfully built blond youth 
gave me a paw and was introduced by the 
Baroness as ‘My Baby.’ 
‘ ‘ Baby looked as though he had been a gigolo 
in a very cheap restaurant somewhere in Berlin, 
W. His eyes were a watery blue, his hair was 
curly and his smile much too sweet. . . . 
‘ ‘ The walls were decorated with photos of the 
Baroness as a South Sea Princess, ‘ little gardener ’ 
and society lady. In the last, taken by a Parisian 
photographer who had greatly flattered her, she 
seemed to represent a canary which had been 
treated with peroxide, given empty eyes and a 
Coty mouth. 
“Nestling with dreamy half-closed eyes in a 
corner of one of the divans the Baroness — quite 
unasked — related her romantic story, the gospel of 
her life, as she called it, while Baby stroked her 
hands and arranged the cushions behind her. 
‘ ‘ The next letters in my satchel were addressed 
to Dr. Ritter. ... I roared like a foghorn and 
there was a rustling in the bushes. Dr. and Mrs. 
Ritter were exponents of the nudist cult, but not 
exhibitionists. They received you in more suit- 
able clothing, and once you had seen them you 
were glad. . . . 
“ Feminine charm will always triumph over the 
realities of science, however genial and vague, and 
for a democratic American a baroness is pure 
heaven — ‘How shocking! What a thrill.’ 
‘ ‘ When the Baroness arrived on the island the 
Ritters refused to give her water, but instead gave 
her donkey a whole bucketful of the precious fluid. 
