The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
ATOLLS OF THE SUN
Photo from L. Gauthier
Nature’s mirror showed him why he could not leave
FOREWORD
“Atolls of the Sun” is a book of experiences, impressions,and dreams in the strange and lonely islands ofthe South Seas. It does not aim to be literal, or sequential,though everything in it is the result of mywanderings in the far and mysterious recesses of thePacific Ocean.
I am not a scientist or scholar, and can relate onlywhat I saw and heard, felt and imagined, in my dwellingwith savage and singular races among the wonderfullagoons of the coral atolls, and poignant valleysof disregarded islands.
If I can make my reader see and feel the sad andbeautiful guises of life in them, and the secrets of afew unusual souls, I shall be satisfied. The thrills ofadventure upon the sea and in the shadowy glens, theodors of rare and sweet flowers, the memories of lovablehumans, are here written to keep them alive in myheart, and to share them with my friends.
Life is not real. It is an illusion, a screen uponwhich each one writes the reactions upon himself of hissensory knowledge. The individual is the movingcamera, and what he calls life is his projection of thepanorama about him—not more actual than the figuresand storms upon the cinema screen. In this book Ihave put the film that passed through my mind in wildplaces, and among natural people.
IIIIt is useless to look to find in the South Seas whatI have found. It is there, gl