TRAVELLERS' TALES.* TuEsE two books of travel and adventure are
readable from end to end. Whether they arc altogether believ- able is another matter and one which is really beside the point. They are pleasure-books, not books of information. Did the author of Cannibal Lands really take his wife with him to seek adventures in the New Hebrides, and were he and she really in almost daily danger of being killed and eaten ? Anyhow, each hair's-breadth escape left the couple more eager than before for danger, experience and " films," and the reader, becoming imbued with their spirit, rejoices when they get off with a whole skin and several good photographs, ;and wonders what will be their next adventure.
Mr. Johnson and his wife set out from Sydney with -a double purpoe. Pirst, to proi.-e that cannibalism still existed in the South Sea Islands, and secondly, to photo- graph the Cannibals, not actually at their unspeakable orgies, but in their habit, or rather their nakedness, as they live. The book is the illustrated narrative of their :success. They made their headquarters at Vao, the nearest (more or legs) civilized island to that on which live the terrible Malekula bushmen. The first object of the photographers was, of course, to placate the savages. " I felt," writes Mr. Johnson, " that the peaceable nature of my .expedition would put me on good terms with the savages. Cruel as they were, they were childlike too, and the fact that we were coming to them in a friendly spirit with presents, for which apparently we were asking nothing in return, would, I felt sure, disarm their hostility. I had discovered that most of the recent murders of white men had been com- mitted by the savages in a spirit of revenge. Recruiters who had carried off their kinsfolk ; traders who had cheated them ; members of punitive expeditions, or the occasional Simon Legree who had earned the hatred of the blacks by cruelty—such were the victim of savage dun or knife."
In a measure their confidence was justified. Once they ran away home, having narrowly escaped death ; but they ran with their photographic spoils, and after exhibiting the savage chief IsTagpate and his attendant cannibals in Sydney, they returned after many months to the scene of their quest. The photographers had lost their fear ; they
'fzupiliarized themselves with the. faces of their—so to speak,', clientele." " a sense they were My. people," and "in-- the comfortable surroundings of great theatres (2-,;t40-1,)lorittel/p Tra-Lorkkm.o. Aral, re. Johnsen. -.-Lesdon: Conetakle. ed.1--,
L. l'oster. Loidon: Jcilin Lane. 121. &LI
had stood naked and terrible before thousands of civilized people.". " Nagpate " stood out before them once more like a " fade in." He no longer seemed quite real, yet his appearance was quite familiar. " Osa and I forgot that this savage had once wanted to eat us. We forgot what had happened at our first violent meeting. We looked at each other and smiled, and then, both actuated by the same unaccountable impulse, we rushed forward and grabbed his hand." After this emotional meeting, which took place upon the beach, the film-seekers decided to return to their cutter, and to their amazement Nagpate expressed a desire to come with them and see the ship. " Now, hundreds of his own people had been grabbed from his beach in times gone by . and blackbirded ' away to slavery. He was accustomed, and with cause, to think the white man as merciless as we thought him." Yet he put himself completely in their power. He and two of his men squatted upon the deck, ate tinned salmon and
hard tack and looked at the pictures which had been taken of him on the previous visit of his hosts. Such an ebullition of friendliness, however, gave—as the photographers well knew—no assurance of safety for the future. "These savages are as wilful and uncertain in their moods as children." They returned the compliment paid them, and went to sec Nagpate in his village ; but they went armed and accompanied by armed servants. The amazing and repulsive sights they saw as his guests the reader will find out for himself.
Perhaps the best illustrations in the book were provided by a neighbouring tribe of bushmen not under the rule of Nagpate, known as the Monkey Men. They do not look very much like monkeys, and one boy depicted upon page 129 has a really interesting face. Some of the small pigmy men whom the travellers came across upon one of their expeditions seemed to be the lowest in intelligence, but on the other hand they had less of the wild beast about them than their fellows. They were kind and childish, touchingly pleased with the attentions of the white men, looking at the pictures and receiving little presents with an eager delight.
It is impossible to put this book down without feeling puzzled. To what extent are the scenes real ? Anyhow, both letterpress and pictures are intensely vivid, and some of the descriptions both of scenery and adventure are breathless in their interest.
A Tropical Tramp2 has something very different to relate to us. He tramps in Peru among the wreckage of civilizations. He is never altogether away from the white man. He travels for "copy" as the Johnson travelled for films, but we never lose the sense even among the Chincho Indians that we are living. in our own time among modern white men. It is true they are surrounded by a low and strange civilization, living upon the ruins of something higher if more dreadful—the Inca civilization upon which ancient Spain superimposed , herself. The writer's real interest is in the life of the white man in semi- savage surroundings ; he is no antiquarian and he does not seek to take any point of view but that of a New Yorker with the wanderlust upon him. It -is a sordid enough life which he depicts among " tramps " high and loW, rich and poor. Whether they live in comparative luxury or squalor, whether they work or idle, we have a sense of being in very low company. Yet they are amusing, these odd gentry ; and they stick together and are loyal to each other in a remarkable degree, and for a few of them— drunken, lazy, bull-fighting, philandering crew as they are—we cannot help feeling as much liking as is consonant with utter disrespect. The chapters and the incidents are well arranged, and when the author tells us that he often writes his true experiences and finds a sale for them as fiction we cannot altogether disbelieve him, though we may be tempted now and then to think that the reverse is also true of his narrative from time to time. Both books are almost entirely unanalytical. One can well imagine the despair which comes over the serious anthropological " field worker " with his thirst for unmodified customs when he finds that cheerful sensationalists like the Johnsons have been before him. The most unabashed " native rite " would surely shrink before their uncompromising " Robinson Crusoe attitude- of patronage toward " These Savages.". -
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