of the sea.

That I should thus have reversed the verdict of Lord Tennyson's

hero is less eccentric than appears. Few men who come to the

islands leave them; they grow grey where they alighted; the palm

shades and the trade-wind fans them till they die, perhaps

cherishing to the last the fancy of a visit home, which is rarely

made, more rarely enjoyed, and yet more rarely repeated. No part

of the world exerts the same attractive power upon the visitor, and

the task before me is to communicate to fireside travellers some

sense of its seduction, and to describe the life, at sea and

ashore, of many hundred thousand persons, some of our own blood and

language, all our contemporaries, and yet as remote in thought and

habit as Rob Roy or Barbarossa, the Apostles or the Caesars.

The first experience can never be repeated. The first love, the

first sunrise, the first South Sea island, are memories apart and

touched a virginity of sense. On the 28th of July 1888 the moon

was an hour down by four in the morning. In the east a radiating

centre of brightness told of the day; and beneath, on the skyline,

the morning bank was already building, black as ink. We have all

read of the swiftness of the day's coming and departure in low

latitudes; it is a point on which the scientific and sentimental

tourist are at one, and has inspired some tasteful poetry. The

period certainly varies with the season; but here is one case

exactly noted. Although the dawn was thus preparing by four, the

sun was not up till six; and it was half-past five before we could

distinguish our expected islands from the clouds on the horizon.

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