Excerpt from Heroes of the South Seas Almost everybody has heard of Captain Cook, the famous old navigator who used to go cruising round the world, hunting up all sorts of queer places and queer people and opening the way for other explorers. It was in the year 1769, on one of his voyages, that he came across two neighboring groups of isl ands in the Southern Pacific, one of which had been first seen by an Englishman through the eyes of Captain Wallis, who called it the Geor gian Group, after King George of England. Captain Cook, however, did not stop to draw distinctions, but gave the whole cluster the name of the Society Islands, in honor of the Royal Society of London, and though for a while the two groups were commonly known as the Windward and the Leeward Islands they are now both included under the title bestowed upon them by Captain Cook. The largest island, Tahiti, has a circuit Of one hundred and forty miles, and contains about six hundred square miles. It is made up Of two rounded peninsulas joined by a narrow isthmus, and is crowned by a high mountain peak called The Diadem. The inhabitants were found to be tall and stout, with brown skin and dark eyes, and they seemed merry and good-natured; but underneath they were very bad indeed, and thought nothing Of stealing, or of telling lies, or even Of killing anybody with whom they happened to be vexed, or whom they wished to put out of the way. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.