Buy this book on-line CAMERON**, IAN: : LOST PARADISE - The Exploration of the PacificLONDON.CENTURY,1987. ISBN 0712616136.
UK,Qrto HB+dw/dj,1st edn.NFINE/NFINE.Owner inscrptn to fep inked out,dw/dj price-clipped.Minimal creasing dw/dj edges.UK,
Qrto HB+dw/dj,1st edn,248pp includes b/w+ colour illus,maps,appendix,a biblio and an index.
The European seamen who explored the Pacific made some of the longest and most hazardous voyages in history.They had to endure squalor,brutality,hunger,thirst and an appalling death rate.However,when they reached the islands of the central Pacific they were made welcome by a people who,in innocence,offered them food,drink,shelter and sex,and asked for nothing in return. 'What a country!' wrote the French explorer de Bougainville, 'What a people! I thought I had been transported to Paradise.'
Yet within a century of de Bougainville's landing,the people of the Pacific islands had been decimated by deprivation,disease and the total collapse of their culture - left with nothing to look forward to but 'going into the night to join the spirits of their ancestors'.Paradise had been found.And lost.
CAMERON's book describes the physical creation of the Pacific,and suggests how the ocean's multitude of islands may have first been populated by those true discoverers of the ocean,the Polynesians. It brings vividly to life the epic voyages of the Spanish,Dutch,British,French, Russian and American explorers as they battled against the vast distances of the Pacific and the appalling weather conditions of the ocean's polar approaches. It recounts the excesses of the exploiters - the freebooters,sealers, whalers,missionaries and traders - who followed in the explorers wake.Using contemporary diaries,material and illustrations from the archives of the Royal Geographic Society,CAMERON chronicles both the triumph of the Pacific voyages and the tragedy of their aftermath.
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