Boston: Herbert B. Turner & Company, 1904

8vo, pp. 318. Original green boards, lettered in gilt to front panel and spine. Top edge gilt. Silk bookmark. Very minor rubbing and bumping to corners and spine ends, gilt on spine a little dulled, but still a near fine copy.

First edition

Another instalment of Stoddard's wanderings among (and into) the olive-skinned natives of the South Seas. In this one, published thirty-one years after South-Sea Idyls, Stoddard edges towards candour. In the Story Kane-Aloha he writes: 'It does not matter if in my calmer moments reason cautions me to beware -- my head and my heart don't hitch -- they never did -- and so I have written as I have written in vain if I, for a few moments only, have afforded interest or pleasure to the careful student of the Unnatural History of Civilisation'.