Mystic Isles of the South Seas. — Reading Companion

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In Category - Places Peoples

Authors: O'Brien, Frederick, 1869-1932 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Tahiti (French Polynesia : Island) -- Description and travel Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 156,382

Reading time 680 min

Text sections 17

The catalog record for Mystic Isles of the South Seas. — Reading Companion provides practical reading context through 156,382 words, 11 hr 20 min estimated reading time, and 17 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 20.6 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Tahiti (French Polynesia : Island) -- Description and travel,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #11400

Frederick O'Brien's personal narrative of Tahiti and Moorea, focusing on sensory impressions, market life, and the interplay between native and colonial cultures, based on his travels in the early 20th century.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

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Edition quality

File: pg11400

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t was puzzling. Did not these natives of Tahiti themselves wear little clothing? Who were they to object to a white man doffing the superfluities of dress in a climate where breadfruit and bananas grow? Or the French, the governors of Tahiti? Were they, in that isle so distant from Paris, their capital, practising a puritanism unknown at home? Was nature so fearful? The figure of the barefooted man often arose as I watched the Farallones disappear, the last of land we would see until we arrived at Tahiti, nearly two weeks later.

The days fell away from the calendar; they obliterated themselves as quietly as our ship's wake to the north, as we planed over the smooth waters toward the equator. Gradually the passengers took on character, and out of the first welter of contacts came those definite impressions which are almost always right and which, though we modify them or reverse them by acquaintance, we return to finally.

There was a Chinese, the strangest figure of an Asiatic, with a thin mustache, and wearing always a black frock-coat and trousers, elastic gaiters, and a stiff, black hat. His face was long and oval and the color of old ivory. He had tried to gain admission to Australia and New Zealand, and then the United States, and had been excluded under some harsh laws. He was plainly a scholar, but had brought with him from China a store of curios, probably to enable him to earn money in the land of the white. Australia had refused him; he had been shut out of San Francisco, and the very steamship that brought him was compelled to take him away. He had failed to bring a necessary certificate, or something of the sort, and the inexorable laws of three Christian countries had sent him wandering, so that it was inevitable he must return to China by the route he had come. He was the most mournful of sights, sitting most of the day in a retired spot, brooding, apparently over his fate. He never smiled, though I who have been much in China, tried to stir him from his sadness by exclamations and gestures. His race has a very keen sense of humor. They see a thousand funny things about them, and laugh inwardly; but they never see anything amusing in themselves. The individual man conceives himself a dignified figure in a world of burlesque.

This man's face was rid of any self-pity. I think he was stunned by the horror of the thing, that he, a man of Chinese letters, who had departed from the centuried custom of his pundit caste of remaining in their own country, who had left his family or clan to increase his store of lesser knowledge, should be denied the door by these inferior nations of the West. He might have recalled Chien Lung, a Manchu emperor, who, when apologized to in writing by a Dutch governor of Batavia who had murdered almost all the Chinese there, replied that China had no interest in wretches who had left their native land. A thousand years ago the Chinese put the soldier lowest in the scale and the scholar highest, with the man of business as of no importance. And yet these commercial peoples barred their gates to him! For a number of days he took his place in the shade of a davited boat, and now and again he read from a quaint book the Analects of Confucius.

We sailed on Wednesday, and on Sunday made the first tropic, nearly twenty-three and a half degrees above the line. No rough weather or unkindly wind had disturbed us from the hour we had left the "too nyked" man upon the wharf, and Sunday, when I went to take my bath before breakfast, I felt the soft fingers of the South caress my body, and looking out upon the purple ocean, whose expanse was barely dimpled by gleams of silver, I saw flying-fish skimming the crests of the swinging waves. The officers and stewards appeared in white; the passengers, too, put off their temperate-zone clothes, and the decks were gay with color. We all seemed to feel that we must be in consonance with the loving nature that had made the sky so blue and the sea so still.

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Frederick O'Brien opens his account with a frank admission: this is a record of days and nights, thoughts and dreams, written without scientific authority. He positions the book as an anodyne for readers afflicted by the machine age, a transport to the loveliest scenes on the globe. The preface also introduces a trilogy, placing Mystic Isles before White Shadows in the South Seas and promising a future volume on the Dangerous Archipelago. O'Brien includes a pronunciation guide for Tahitian words, noting the language is dying fast—a remark that colors his entire project as both celebration and elegy.

A Self-Aware Traveler's Voice

From the first paragraph, O'Brien establishes a voice that is personal, playful, and unapologetically subjective. He writes that he went to the islands with one thought—to play—and that his profit is the spirit of that play. This is not a scientific treatise but a chronicle of vivid impressions. The reader is warned not to expect discoveries unless in the heart of the human. O'Brien's tone is conversational, often addressing the reader directly, and he freely mixes anecdote with observation. His descriptions of the Papeete market, for instance, are filled with sensory detail: the bamboo fiber for hats, the old crones shaking with laughter, the impossible fish in pale blue and brilliant yellow. The voice is that of a raconteur who delights in the exotic and the absurd, yet remains aware of the colonial context he inhabits.

The Market as Microcosm

The extended description of the Papeete market in the excerpts reveals O'Brien's method: he uses a single location to capture the social and cultural dynamics of Tahiti. The market is divided into meat, fish, and green things, but it is the fish section that draws his most vivid prose. He compares the market to the aquariums of Honolulu, Naples, and New York, noting that here the same fish are spread out for buying. The scene is populated with a cast of characters: the consul's bride from New Jersey, a priest, a Mormon elder, Chinese cafe-keepers, and native police in gaudy uniforms. O'Brien observes the interactions between these groups with a mixture of amusement and detachment. The market becomes a stage where the tensions and harmonies of colonial life are played out daily.

Rhythm and Repetition in Structure

O'Brien's prose relies on rhythmic repetition and cataloging. In the market passage, he lists the types of fish—parrot-fish, pale blue, brilliant yellow, black as charcoal—in a way that mimics the abundance he describes. He also repeats structural phrases: "There sit or loll the maidens," "There wait the automobiles," "There are three great aquariums." This anaphoric style gives the writing a chant-like quality, appropriate for a book that often celebrates the musicality of Tahitian language and life. The opening preface itself uses repetition: "the songs I sang, the dances I danced, the men and women, white and tawny." This technique creates a sense of immersion, drawing the reader into the rhythm of island existence as O'Brien experienced it.

The Limits of the Excerpts

The excerpts provided cover only the preface and a portion of one chapter on the Papeete market. The full book contains seventeen sections, including chapters on the discovery of Tahiti, the Tiare Hotel, and various adventures. From the table of contents, we can infer that O'Brien's narrative moves from departure in San Francisco to arrival in Tahiti, then to detailed descriptions of the island and its people. The excerpts do not reveal the full arc of his journey or the later chapters on Moorea and other islands. Readers should be aware that the market scene, while rich, represents only a small part of O'Brien's overall project. His trilogy suggests a broader engagement with the South Seas, but the present volume focuses specifically on Tahiti and Moorea.

O'Brien's preface frames the book as an escape from the machine age, but the excerpts show a writer deeply engaged with the particulars of place. Readers will find a narrator who is both participant and observer, unafraid to admit his own limitations. The market scene, with its vivid characters and colors, offers a taste of O'Brien's method: attentive to detail, fond of cataloging, and aware of the colonial dynamics at play. As you read, note how O'Brien balances his role as a pleasure-seeker with his role as a chronicler of a vanishing world.

I found myself lingering over O'Brien’s descriptions of the market air in Papeete, that mix of frangipani and salt, and it reminded me of another kind of coastal stillness I once felt, closer to home. That quiet, particular mood of place lingers in Yorkshire—Coast and Moorland Scenes — Context and Discussion too, though the light is greyer and the surf colder. Both simply hold weather and time.