cht 'Casco' from San Francisco to the Marquesas, the Paumotus, Tahiti,
and thence northward to Hawaii; a second (June to December 1889) in the
trading schooner 'Equator,' from Honolulu, the Hawaiian capital, where
the author had stayed in the intervening five months, to the Gilberts
and thence to Samoa; and a third (April to September 1890) in the
trading steamer 'Janet Nicoll,' which set out from Sydney and followed a
very devious course, extending as far as Penrhyn in the Eastern to the
Marshall Islands in the Western Pacific._

_Before setting out on the first of these voyages, the author had
contracted to write an account of his adventures in the form of letters
for serial publication. The plan by and by changed in his mind into that
of a book partly of travel and partly of research, which should combine
the results of much careful observation and enquiry upon matters of
island history, custom, belief, and tradition, with some account of his
own experiences and those of his travelling companions. Under the
nominal title of 'Letters' he began to compose the chapters of such a
book on board the 'Janet Nicoll,' and continued the task during the
first ten months of his residence in Samoa (October 1890 to July 1891).
Before the serial publication had gone very far, he realised that the
personal and impersonal elements in his work were not very successfully_
_ combined, nor in proportions that contented his readers. Accordingly
he abandoned for the time being the idea of republishing the chapters in
book form. But when the scheme of the Edinburgh Edition was maturing, he
desired that a selection should be made from them and should form one
volume of that edition. That desire was carried out. The same selection
is here republished, with the addition of a half-section then omitted,
describing a visit to the Kona coast of Hawaii and the lepers' port of
embarkation for Molokai._

_It must be understood that a considerable portion of the author's
voyages above mentioned is not recorded at all in the following pages.
Of one of its most attractive episodes, the visit to Tahiti, no account
was written; while of his experiences in Hawaii only the visit to the
Kona coast is included. Several chapters which did not come out to the
writer's satisfaction have been omitted. Of the five sections here
given, each is complete in itself, with the exception of Part III. The
first deals with the Marquesas, the second with the Paumolus--the f