Djimbanko
Excerpt from Chapter 16: The island of Djimbanko was unclaimed territory, lying in the ferrous-blue straits between the New Hebrides and New Caledonia. It was too barren for yam gardens and the population too mtley to be of lasting interest to the Anglicans, Presbyterians, or Lutherans. It was a trading outpost, black market, way station, and island brothel. For decades it had been a sanctuary for escaped convicts from the French and British colonies and for kanakas banished from their own islands.San Christobal
Excerpt from Chapter 18: The Cullion spent two weeks trading in the southern Solomons, anchoring off San Christobal, Ulawa, and Malaita. They weren’t the untainted islands Owen had hoped for—they were part of a newly formed British protectorate, and Roman Catholic priests had been in Makira Harbour since 1846—but the villages were resilient and steeped in their own culture. Away from the coastline, where smallpox had wiped out a sizable swath of the population, the clansmen were eager to trade with the landing party… Photos from theAustralian Museum:
Solomon Islands, about 1900
Tikalia
Excerpt from Chapter 24: The Tikalia lived in wattled huts and limestone caves. They burrowed into sea cliffs on the windward side of the island. There were chieftains and headmen on both sides of the island but no dogs. Women held sway over the gardens—Poumetan mythology was wrong about Tikalia’s lack of agriculture—and the forests were patched with yam and sago plots, fenced in by poles kerfed with whale teeth. The beardless men rubbed their faces smooth with pumice and cut their hair with shards of flint. “Vue de la Plage de Tikopia” A 19th century lithograph of French explorers arriving on the remote island of Tikopia in the Solomons, the basis for the fictional island of Tikalia in the novel. Artist: J. S. Arago.Malekula
Excerpt from Chapter 13: Two days later the ship anchored in a southern Malekula bay. Owen stood by the cathead and watched the anchor line run out, sluicing the water like a smelter’s knife through waved lead. Three men stood aloft and furled the mainsail. Terrapin was on deck to oversee the operation and had barely left the charthouse since Fiji. He was said to be in a blue funk. In these latitudes, Owen was told, the captain had a standing obsession about the Cullion getting hogged up on a reef or running aground on a sandbar. Top photo from Ships of Our Ancestors by Michael J. AntutaBottom photo from travel.webshots.com
Fiji
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They were showing the savages on the rooftop—that was the word at the curbstone. Dominic Smith’s third novel—Bright and Distant Shores—is set amid the skyscrapers of 1890s Chicago and the far-flung islands of the South Pacific. Chicago First Equitable has won the race to construct the world’s tallest building and its president, Hale Gray, hits upon a surefire way to make it an enduring landmark: to establish on the roof an exhibition of real-life “savages.” He sponsors a South Seas voyage to collect not only weaponry and artefacts, but also “several natives related by blood” for the company’s rooftop spectacle. Caught up in this scheme are two orphans—Owen Graves, an itinerant trader from Chicago’s South Side, and Argus Niu, a mission houseboy in the New Hebrides. At the cusp of the twentieth century, the expedition forces a collision course between the tribal and the civilized, and between two young men plagued by their haunting pasts. |
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