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Mystic Isles of the South Seas
The falls of Fautaua, famed in Tahitian legend, are exquisite in beauty and surrounding, and so near Papeete that I walked to them and back in a day. Yet hardly any one goes there. For those who have visited them they remain a shrine of loveliness, wondrous in form and unsurpassed in color. Before the genius of Tahiti was smothered in the black and white of modernism, the falls and the valley in which they are, were the haunt of lovers who sought seclusion for their pledgings. A princess accompanied me to them. She was not a daughter of a king or queen, but she was near to royalty, and herself as aristocratic in carriage and manner as was Oberea, who loved Captain Cook. -from Chapter XII In the years prior to World War I, American author FREDERICK O'BRIEN (1869-1932) took a grand tour of the South Pacific, and the trilogy of books he wrote upon his return sparked a new thirst for all things exotic, far-flung, and gloriously "uncivilized." In the second of these volumes, 1921's Mystic Isles of the South Seas, O'Brien explores the "merriest, most fascinating world of all the cosmos" the islands of Tahiti and Moorea. This is no simple account of ships boarded and sights O'Brien takes us along on his journey of the heart and soul, to a land where a dance is an expression of passion, the sea is a living being, and fishing is practically religion. But O'Brien also makes pointed and poignant note of the inevitable death of this world, to which Westerners introduced the evils of alcohol and Asians were coming to dominate the population. This is a unique perspective on the South Seas cultures of old just as they were disappearing. OF INTEREST armchair travelers, amateur anthropologists, readers of cross-cultural studies
- GenresNonfictionClassicsTravel
548 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1921
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 17, 2025
One of Gauguin's shacks still remained in sight along the road. Several people remembered Robert Louis Stevenson, and a few still had gifts he had presented to them. Tahitians, albeit converted to Christianity, held traditional feasts, lived if not a pastoral life, then one that still had connections to the sea and ancient myths. Papeete, meanwhile, kept a certain excitement about it, although foreigners dominated the port and its increasingly messy and polluted environment. A trip to Moorea could isolate you from French influence. And a trip to the Tahitian hinterlands allowed anyone willing to spend the time, that would be months and months and months, to get as close to ancient Polynesian ways as possible.
That's what things were like for Frederick O'Brien, when he spent part of the years of 1913-1914 in Tahiti. O'Brien seems to have been heavily influenced by James G. Frazer, although he makes no mention of him in this book. But his claims for common roots among Christianity and other religions with Polynesian beliefs could well come from early editions of The Golden Bough. For O'Brien gives over many pages of Mystic Isles to religion, philosophy, anthropological musings, as well as the personal romance of traveling to a remote and relatively untouched part of the globe. He sometimes gives in to purple prose, so it's a good thing I'm something of a connoisseur of writing that is sometimes overstuffed and overflowing with descriptive passages. Give me more!
As stated, almost all the book tells of O'Brien's journey to the South Seas right before World War I--the book itself was published in 1921. There are some German-French-British tensions (not American, however) that illustrate how people living all the way across the world from the European homelands still engaged in national rivalries. The last chapter is the one part of the book that provides for a coda or an update on things. Princess Noanoa, one of O'Brien's Tahitian friends, writes to him in 1919 to tell him that almost every Tahitian he met on his trip is now dead. The Spanish flu pandemic killed them.
That's what things were like for Frederick O'Brien, when he spent part of the years of 1913-1914 in Tahiti. O'Brien seems to have been heavily influenced by James G. Frazer, although he makes no mention of him in this book. But his claims for common roots among Christianity and other religions with Polynesian beliefs could well come from early editions of The Golden Bough. For O'Brien gives over many pages of Mystic Isles to religion, philosophy, anthropological musings, as well as the personal romance of traveling to a remote and relatively untouched part of the globe. He sometimes gives in to purple prose, so it's a good thing I'm something of a connoisseur of writing that is sometimes overstuffed and overflowing with descriptive passages. Give me more!
As stated, almost all the book tells of O'Brien's journey to the South Seas right before World War I--the book itself was published in 1921. There are some German-French-British tensions (not American, however) that illustrate how people living all the way across the world from the European homelands still engaged in national rivalries. The last chapter is the one part of the book that provides for a coda or an update on things. Princess Noanoa, one of O'Brien's Tahitian friends, writes to him in 1919 to tell him that almost every Tahitian he met on his trip is now dead. The Spanish flu pandemic killed them.
August 15, 2023
Interesting Journal
This book was long and at first a bit boring. As I read it I realized it was a journal of the author's experience of his South Sea trip to Tahiti.
This book was long and at first a bit boring. As I read it I realized it was a journal of the author's experience of his South Sea trip to Tahiti.
November 7, 2013
Delivers much the same flavor as "White Sands in the South Seas"
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews