WHAT TIMARU IS READING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21216, 10 December 1938, Page 12

WHAT TIMARU IS READING

THE VIKINGS OF THE PACIFIC PASSING OF THE TAIL SHIPS (Specially written for “The Timaru Herald” by A. K. Elliot) “Vikings of the Sunrise.” by Peter Ii 1 Buck, is an entrancing book. Whence came they? “We came from Hawaiki-the-Great From Hawaiki - the - Long, from Hawaiki-the-Distant. Hawaiki is a symbol of the distant . home whence came the ancestors of the I first discoverers of the heart of the ! Pacific. The peoples on the western I base of the Polynesian triangle at ! Samoa and Tonga speak of Pulot-u as i the land to which the soul of man I returns “along the slippery path, the sliding path of death.” Most of those who penetrate farther into the triangle cherish the memory 7 of a homeland in distant Hawaiki. From Hawaiki, their ancestors set out on the trail of the rising sun, and to Hawaiki the souls of their dead return along the golden trail cast on the ocean by the dying rays of the setting sun. It is as it should be; the morning sun of youth and adventure, the setting sun for age and rest.” This is only one of many beautiful paragraphs in "Vikings of the Sunrise." by Dr. Peter Buck. Te Rangi Hiroa. Director of Bernie P. Bishop Museum. A bri?f biography of Dr. Buck may sene as an introduction to those who have not read his other books or heard ’of his researches in Polynesia, of which he says, “Polynesia is my heritage by virtue of birth, language, and understanding.” Educated at Te Aute College and at i the Otago Medical School, University i of New Zealand. Dr. Buck served as i House Surgeon at Dunedin Hospital, . becoming Medical Officer of Health to I the Maori, whom he afterward reprei sented in the New Zealand Parliament ■ and Cabinet. During the World War, i both as a medical officer and a com--1 batant officer, he served in Egypt, j Malta. Gallipoli. France, and Belgium • and received the D.S.O. and other i decorations for valorous service. In 1927, he joined the staff of Bernice P. Bishop Museum at Honolulu to do field work in Polynesia, and in 1936 he was appointed to the Faculty of Yale University as Professor of Anthropology and detached for service as Director of Bishop Museum. We read of the ' greatest navigators of the world—navij gators, long before Columbus—and many : of their voyages were over 2000 miles l in extent, and then only in double canoes—as an old Maori Proverb has it "Waves of the ocean are breasted by the bow 7 of the canoe, Waves of men are surmounted by human courage.” And so from a wonderful book, nontechnical in its story, but full of splendid detail, we learn something of “What manner of men were they who i by surpassing the achievements of the ; Phcenicans in the Mediterranean and ' the Vikings of tbe north Atlantic are I worthy of being called the supreme ■ navigators of history?” Life On Sailing Ships ; In "The Tall Ships Pass,” by W. L. A. ! Derby, we are told that “So long as the I word ‘sailor’ remains in the English i vocabulary, so long will live the work i from which that word was derived. The . original significance of the term is now ; a thing of the past, for the ’sailor’ has ‘ become a ‘seaman,’ but the debt which ’ we, as a nation, owe to the bygone i sailor of the sail will not lightly be j forgotten.” This is taken from a book ■ fit to rank with the classics of Lubbock and Chatterton. The author I feels that he has to apologise that he j should advance yet another addition | to the vast field of literature* but he j excuses himself on the grounds that the subject is perhaps approached from a different angle. The author sailed on that famous tall ship “Herzogin Cecil,” and has given a most vivid life of a sailing ship. This is the ground he has endeavoured to cover—something of the life and work in deepwater sail to-day. of those who operate, command and man the last of the square-riggers, and of the cargoes which even now offer a liveiii hood to the windjammer. The book ! is an outsize in books, and the aci companying photos are full page and i add in no small measure to the pleasure of the book. An interesting chapter | of books cf the sea and its ships has a ■ typical chapter heading: “These are the chaps that toiled together In Trade and Doldrum and black Horn weather: Secured and holystoned, reefed and furled. Watch and watch round the whole wet world. Hauled and sweated at sheets and braces With sun in their eyes or the sleet in their faces. Fought and fisted the frozen canvas On footropes jumping like bucking horses. These are the men that sailed and manned, Worked her and drove her from land to land.”