PREFACE.

(TO THE SECOND EDITION.)

DU

21

C77 1882

NOTWITHSTANDING the almost prohibitory price at which the first edition of 'Coral Lands' was issued, the very flattering reception which my work has received from both the public and press has resulted in its now being altogether out of print. Every day public attention is being more and more directed to the infant Colony of Fiji and the surrounding groups in the Pacific.

The importance of Polynesia will not perhaps be thoroughly understood by the majority of my countrymen until the completion of the Panama Canal has placed these rich archipelagoes on the direct route from London to our Australian Colonies.

In the meantime a popular edition of such a work as 'Coral Lands' may tend to prepare the public mind for estimating the full value in every sense of the islands of the great South Sea. The information afforded in this edition has been brought down to the latest news from the Pacific, and the whole work has been thoroughly revised.

In this revision I have been assisted by many good friends. For the most recent returns of the exports and imports of the colony of Fiji, I am indebted to the indefatigable Colonial Secretary, the Hon. John B. Thurston, C.M.G.; while in regard to some interesting Samoan data, I have to acknowledge the kind assistance of Mr. H. Phipps Allender.

The beautiful lagoon of Mango, which forms the frontispiece, was sketched from a photograph by my friend M. Frédéric Sang, of the Salon, Paris. For the index appended to this edition I am indebted to Mr. F. W. Jordan.

CHURCH END, FINCHLEY,

H. STONEHEWER COOPER.

June, 1882.

PREFACE.

(TO THE FIRST EDITION.)

THE original pioneers of the Pacific were exceptionally unfor

tunate.

In the church of St. Francis, in the town of Nombre de Dios, on the Darien isthmus, is a painting of Vasco Nunez de Balboa. With infinite labour he has dragged the timbers of his vessel across the mountains of America, and now, clad in complete armour and standing up to the waist in salt water, with a sword in one hand and the Papal flag in the other, he is depicted as taking formal possession of the islands of the Pacific on behalf of the Apostolic See of Rome. He died under the headsman's axe in 1517, for an unjust charge of treason, four years after his great discovery.

Magalhaens, who passed, in November, 1520, through the straits which bear his name, died the next year in a miserable skirmish with some Indians. Alvaro de Saavedra died upon his return voyage from Mexico to Manilla. It was Saavedra

who proposed to the King of Spain to cut through the isthmus of Darien, and very circumstantially described the route between the San Miguel and Atrato, a favourite one at this hour.

Alvaro de Mendana, who discovered the Solomon Islands in 1567, afterwards planned and attempted a scheme for their colonisation. On his second voyage, however, in 1595, he was unable to find them, and a settlement was tried at Santa Cruz. At that place he died, leaving his wife in command of the colony; but disease and other disasters soon caused it to be abandoned, and the survivors, sick and dying, sailed away for the Philippines, taking Mendana's body with them. The vessel, carrying the corpse of the pioneer, was last seen in full sail drifting towards a reef, but the body of Mendana had the ghastly companionship of a crew of dead men-for no living man was on board the ill-fated discoverer's ship; with their late commander they had all gone on the more extended voyage of eternity.

Dampier, our countryman, died in obscurity, we know not how or where.

Fernando Quiros, who gave his name to an island which yields an annual income of some thousands sterling, has left us this record at the hands of Cardinal Valenza: 'I have seen, in a wine-shop of Seville, one Fernando Quiros, who had been an adventurer in the Indies and beyond, and who told me he

had seen there people who did eat their wives and other relatives, in place of consigning them to tombs, which did not. so much surprise me, seeing that the same thing has been related of the ancients.' Quiros commenced life as a common sailor, and became an admiral. Torres, who gave his name to the Australian Straits, was Quiros's lieutenant, and Torquemada his historian. This man in the wine-shop' died in obscurity in Panama.

Roggewein, who discovered Samoa, was imprisoned in Batavia, and died in wretchedness.

Of Cook's sad end I need not speak.

The French circumnavigator, M. de la Perouse, perished off the island of Vanikoro, one of the Santa Cruz group; while Dumont D'Urville, the Polynesian naturalist and traveller, was burnt to death on the Paris and Versailles railway.

To these men, and many others who seem to have given their lives for the Pacific, we owe a deep debt of gratitude, for they serve, though dead, as finger-posts to a world of

wealth.

Spain is no longer a colonising power, and though the discovery of the Pacific is due to the Latin race, the utilisation of that discovery will almost certainly be the work of the Anglo-Saxon.

With the hope of assisting in that work, morally and commercially, I have written 'Coral Lands.'