Among the South Sea Islands
A Diary by Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson
We can't do much better in describing this book than to quote from Mrs. Stevenson's excellent short preface. From the Preface. "One reason for publishing this diary, is the extraordinary number of books now being printed purporting to give accurate accounts of our lives on board ship and elsewhere, by persons with whome we were very slightly acquainted, or had nevery consciously met. . . . No one, outside our immediate family, sailed with us on any of our cruises. All the books "With Stevenson" here and "With Stevenson" there, are manufactured out of "such stuff as dreams are made on," and false in almost every particular. Contrary tot he general idea, my husband was a man of few intimate friends, and even with these he was reticent to a degree. The diary was written under the most adverse conditions--sometimes on the damp, upturned bottom of a canoe or whaleboat, sometimes when lying face down on the burning sands of the tropic beach, often in copra sheds in the midts of a pandemonium of noise and confusion, but oftener on board the rolling Janet (whose pet name was the Jumping Jenny)--but never in comfortable sorroundings."
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