In the Strange South SeasBeatrice Grimshaw was born in Ireland. She was an adventurer at heart since childhood and an independent soul who longed to travel to far away places. Until 1903 she had been a freelance journalist, a tour organiser and an emigration promoter but her dream was to go to the South Pacific islands. Embarking from San Francisco in 1904, she sailed first to Tahiti, followed by a four month voyage through the South Pacific and an additional two months on the island of Niue. During this trip, she visited Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Rarotonga and some of the Cook islands. She returned to London and published "In the Strange South Seas" in 1907. In the book, Grimshaw not only recounts her adventures but she also describes the customs and lifestyles of the native populations as well as giving an exhaustive picture of the region's fauna and wildlife. The book also contain accounts of cannibalism, head-hunting, poisoning and tribal magic. |
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Common terms and phrases
afternoon Aitutaki Atiu Auckland bananas bath beach beautiful blue boat brown bush canoe captain cave certainly chief civilisation clothes cocoanut colour Cook Group Cook Islands cool copra coral reef dance dark deck dress Duchess Falefa Fangati feet Fiji fish flowers fruit geyser girls green hair half hand hour hundred kava kilt labourers lagoon land lava-lava leaves live look lovely Makea Malden Malden Island Manahiki Mangaia Maori mats miles missionary Mitiaro native never night Niué nuts once oranges Pacific palms pandanus Papeëte pareo passengers pearl Penrhyn pirate plaited pretty queen Rakahanga Raratonga rock Rotorua round sail Samoan Savage Island scarlet schooner shark shell ship shore South Sea Islands steam steamer Tahiti Tahitian taupo things Tinomana Tongan trade traveller trees tropic verandah village walk whole wild wind woman women wonder yellow Zealand
Popular passages
Page 8 - The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark.
Page 9 - Smells are surer than sounds or sights To make your heart-strings crack — They start those awful voices o' nights That whisper, "Old man, come back!" That must be why the big things pass And the little things remain, Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg, Riding in, in the rain.
Page 250 - ... eyeballs, while the threatening bulk of his terrible enemy looms dark and steady, full in the road to life and air. A minute or more has been spent in the downward journey; another minute has passed in the agonized wait under the rock. . . . Has he been seen? . . . Will the creature move away now, while there is still time to return? The diver knows to a second how much time has passed : the third minute is on its way ; but one goes up quicker than one comes down, and there is still hope. . ....
Page 250 - Poe ever conjure up a picture more ghastly than that of a Penrhyn diver, caught like a rat in a trap by some huge, man-eating shark, or fierce kara mauaa — crouching in a cleft of the overhanging coral, under the dark green gloom of a hundred feet of water, with bursting lungs and cracking eyeballs, while the threatening bulk of his terrible enemy looms dark and steady, full in the road to life and air? A minute or more has been spent in the downward journey ; another minute has passed in the agonised...
Page 48 - The Protestant missionaries, with the best intentions in the world, carried things decidedly too far in the way of grandmotherly laws. Even white men were forbidden to be out of doors after eight o'clock at night, on pain of a heavy fine; and the offences for which the natives were flntu would be incredible, were they not recorded in official reports.
Page 17 - One exceedingly pretty girl, with a perfect cataract of black hair overflowing her pale green gown, and a pair of sparkling dark eyes that could never be matched outside the magic lines of Cancer and Capricorn, is making and frying pancakes with something fruity, nature unknown, inside them.
Page 253 - Two minutes and a half; it is barely possible now, but — the sentinel of death moves forward; his cruel eyes, phosphorescent in the gloom, look right into the cleft where the wretched creature is crouching, with almost twenty seconds of life still left, but now not a shred of hope. A few more beats of the labouring pulse, a gasp from the tortured lungs, a sudden rush of silvery air bubbles, and the brown limbs collapse down out of the cleft like wreaths of seaweed. The shark has his own.
Page 49 - ... would be incredible, were they not recorded in official reports. In Rarotonga of those days (not yet ten years past) a native who walked at dusk along the road with his sweetheart . . . was obliged to carry a burning torch in his hand, and he was fined if he let it go out. If he was found weeping over the grave of a woman to whom he was not related, he was again brought up and fined.
Page 53 - The result is that at the present date young Englishmen by the hundred are losing their small capital as " pupils " on Canadian farms, or are starving on the roads in South Africa, while all the time the South Sea Islands hold out hands of peace and plenty, begging humbly for a respectable white population. The brown races are dying out with fearful rapidity ; at their best they never touched the limitless capacities of the golden Pacific soil.
Page 363 - August 1 904, and threw a quantity of hot mud and stones out over the top. Waimangu Geyser itself, which is really more a volcano than a geyser, is supposed to have been formed at the time of the eruption. It did not, however, commence its present activity until 1900, when an enormously high " shot " was seen by one or two explorers camping in the neighbourhood, and the source at once investigated.