Cannibal-Land eBook

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. 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 Lon don and his wife, Charmian, were beside me. It was just dawn. Slowly, out of the morning mists, an is land took shape. The little ship rose and sank on the Pacific swell. The salt breeze rufed 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-land country, of unvisited tribes, still thrills me and makes me restless to be 03 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 cor ners of the earth that civilization has overlooked.