: In the Strange South Seas by Grimshaw Beatrice - Oceania Description and travel; Islands of the Pacific Description and travel

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IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS

Author Of "From Fiji To The Cannibal Islands," Etc.

London: Hutchinson & Co. Paternoster Row

IN THE STRANGE SOUTH SEAS

In desire of many marvels over sea,

When the new made tropic city sweats and roars,

I have sailed with young Ulysses from the quay,

Till the anchor rattled down on stranger shores.

Kipling.

MOST men have their loves, happy or hopeless, among the countries of the earth. There are words in the atlas that ring like trumpet calls to the ear of many a stay-at-home in grey northern cities--names of mountains, rivers, islands, that tramp across the map to the sound of swinging music played by their own gay syllables, that summon, and lure, and sadden the man who listens to their fifing, as the music of marching regiments grips at the heart of the girl who loves a soldier.

They call, they call, they call--through the long March mornings, when the road that leads to everywhere is growing white and dry--through restless summer nights, when one sits awake at the window to see the stars turn grey with the dawn--in the warm midday, when one hurries across the city bridge to a crowded eating-house, and the glittering masts far away down the river must never be looked at as one passes. Of a misty autumn evening, when steamers creeping up to seaport towns send long cries across the water, one here, and another there, will stir uneasily in his chair by the fire, and shut his ears against the insistent call.... Why should he listen, he who may never answer?

Love is not stronger than that call--let sweetheartless girls left alone, and the man of cities who has loved the woman of the wandering foot, give bitter witness. Death is not stronger--those who follow the call must defy him over and over again. Pride of country, love of home, delight in well-known faces and kindly hearts that understand, the ease of the old and well-tried ways, the prick of ordinary ambitions hungering for the showy prizes that every one may see--these are but as dead leaves blown before the wind, when the far-off countries cry across the seas. Not one in a hundred may answer the call; yet never think, you who suppose that love and avarice and the lust of battle sum up all the great passions of the world, that scores out of every hundred Englishmen have not heard it, all the same. "In the heart of every man, a poet has died young"; and in the heart of almost every Briton, a wanderer once has lived. If this were not so, the greatest empire of the world had never been.

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