of a white-sailed ship beating out to the wide sea; the smell of
tarred rope on a blackened wharf, or the touch of the cool little
breeze that rises when the stars come out will waken them again.
Somewhere over the rim of the world lies romance, and every heart
yearns to go and find it.

It is not given to every man to start on the quest of the rainbow's
end. Such fantastic pursuit is not for him who is bound by ties of
home and duty and fortune-to-make. He has other adventure at his own
door, sterner fights to wage, and, perhaps, higher rewards to gain.
Still, the ledgers close sometimes on a sigh, and by the cosiest
fireside one will see in the coals pictures that have nothing to do
with wedding rings or balances at the bank.

It is for those who stay at home yet dream of foreign places that I
have written this book, a record of one happy year spent among the
simple, friendly cannibals of Atuona valley, on the island of
Hiva-oa in the Marquesas. In its pages there is little of profound
research, nothing, I fear, to startle the anthropologist or to
revise encyclopedias; such expectation was far from my thoughts when
I sailed from Papeite on the _Morning Star_. I went to see what I
should see, and to learn whatever should be taught me by the days as
they came. What I saw and what I learned the reader will see and
learn, and no more.

Days, like people, give more when they are approached in not too
stern a spirit. So I traveled lightly, without the heavy baggage of
the ponderous-minded scholar, and the reader who embarks with me on
the "long cruise" need bring with him only an open mind and a love
for the strange and picturesque. He will come back, I hope, as I did,