From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands; [Unknown Binding]

Beatrice Ethel Grimshaw (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1907

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1907. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... chapter V The Song of the Road--Fijian Fun--Night on the Wainikoro--The Noble Savage Fails--The Village Plate--The Lot of the Kaisi--Sharks Again--A Swim for it Northward of Viti Levu (" Great Fiji"), where I had been travelling, lies Vanua Levu (" Great Land "), the second largest island of the group. It is over one hundred miles long, and thirty miles across. On the map, it looked interesting and easy; so I took a steamer up to Lambasa, the principal port, intending to see something of the island. Six weeks afterwards, I came back, having travelled about a hundred and eighty miles in the interior; spent the best part of a month, in different slices of time, waiting for steamers; and learned, once for all, what being "off the road" really meant. Viti Levu was' a mere summer's day picnic compared to Vanua Levu. Stanley (I cannot get rid of the comparison) would have liked Vanua Levu. He would have enjoyed the total absence of bridges, the fine profusion of swamps and gullies, the days when the men had to keep their knives always ready to hack a path through choking lianas, the mornings when it rained horribly, and one had to go on, and get soaked; the evenings when one had to put up in a house without any doors, each open doorway serving as a sort of opera-box for a score or two of greatly excited and interested natives, looking on eagerly at the performance inside. He would have liked to eat ancient biscuits soaked through with rain, and thoughtfully wrapped up by one of the men in a spare sulu, only half soiled--he would have enjoyed rough-washed clothes, cleaned by himself in a river with a scrap of toilet soap--the acquirement of a permanently scarlet nose would not have grieved him as it grieved me, and I am quite sure that he woul...

Product Details

• Unknown Binding: 355 pages
• Publisher: Eveleigh Nash; First edition. edition (1907)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00085AW0A