Paradise in the Pacific

Paradise in the Pacific with the subtitle A Book of Travel, Adventure and Fact in the Sandwich Islands is the account from a journey by ship to the Hawaiian Islands  by William R. Bliss in the 1870s. Bliss describes in details the nature and daily life of the native Hawaiians. There is also accounts of the volcanic activity and the sometimes problematic political situation on the islands. The author is fascinated by the people of Hawaii and a reoccuring theme for him is their simple living and how little they work.  He writes: “That religious teachings, and intercourse with the white people, have generally improved the Hawaiian race, no one will deny But the moral and physical condition of the natives, which I have already portrayed, shows that there is yet great room for their improvement..”

The book starts out with this poem by Tennyson:

“Mariner, mariner, furl your sails,
For here are the blissful downs and dales,
And merrily, merrily carol the gales,
And the 1pangle dances in bi11ht and bay,
And the rainbow forms and flies on the land,
Over the islands free.
Oh I hither, come hither and furl your sails,
And 1weet shall your welcome be.”

Paradise in the Pacific is well-written and easy to read with many interesting observations. If you are visiting Hawaii you will be well prepared to understand a part the islands’ history, but keep in mind that this was written at another time. Download the free PDF e-book here:

Paradise in the Pacific

The First Crossing of Spitsbergen

The First Crossing of Spitsbergen, Svalbard, is an account originally published in 1897 of an journey of exploration and survey to the Arctic. The author Sir William Martin Conway describes several mountain ascents, boat expeditions in the ice fjord, voyages to the North -East-Land, the Seven Islands, expeditions to Hinloopen Strait and Wiches Land, and into most of the Fjords of Spitsbergen, and of an almost complete circumnavigation of the main Island. This journey led the men to areas not touches by man before.

Spitsbergen was discovered by the Dutchmen Barendszoon and Heemskerk on the 17th of June 1596. They were at the time sailing northwards to rind a way over the Pole from Holland to China. In 1607 the same coast was revisited and further explored by the English navigator Hudson, sailing with a purpose similar to that of Barendsz ; but Hudson observed the prevalence of whales, walruses, and other valuable animals, and fisheries were immediately established by Englishmen in consequence. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century the Spitsbergen waters became the scene of much international rivalry, the English attempting to annex the land and secure a monopoly of the fisheries, whilst foreign ” interlopers ” of various nationalities successfully resisted their pretensions.

Svalbard is today Norwegian territory and Spitsbergen is the only permanently inhabited island there. Download The First Crossing of Spitsbergen here as a free, Public Domain PDF e-book (371 pages/24 MB):

The First Crossing of Spitsbergen

 

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness is one of the most read and thoroughly analyzed adventure novels of all time. On the face of it, the book is a fairly straightforward tale about the narrator Marlow’s journey on a small steamboat up the Congo River to find the ivory trader and commander of a trading post, Kurtz.

It is also, however, a ground-breaking history of morality, civilization, racism, imperialism and the drive to seek out and explore blank spaces on the map.

Heart of Darkness did not only provide inspiration for Coppola’s movie Apocalypse Now but is also regularly listed as one the best novels in English from the 20. Century. Download the free PDF e-book here:

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Sir Ernest Shackleton: South!

South! The story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition (1914–1917) is still considered one of the single most dramatic, thrilling and exhausting adventures during the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

In “South!”, Shackleton tells the whole story in his own words.

The goal of the expedition was to perform the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. But when Shackleton’s ship, The Endurance, became locked in ice – and subsequently were crushed and sunk – the goal of the expedition became sheer survival. During the two years of the expedition, the desperate and heroic acts of Shackleton and his crew made history, and rightly so.

Download the free PDF e-book here:

South! by Sir Ernest Shackleton