Horace Holden

"The barbarous beings among whom our lot had been cast"
By sally tarbox TOP 500 REVIEWER on 1 Nov. 2015
Format: Paperback
An interesting account, published in 1836, by an American sailor about his experiences on his first ever journey on a whaling ship, bound for the Indian Ocean.
After a shipwreck on a coral reef, they struggled to row to the nearest island - the largest of the Pelew (Palau) group, where their initial impressions of the natives were of fear and disgust for "a people but one grade above the most ferocious beasts".

"To think of remaining with them to the end of life, or for any great length of time, was like the contemplation of imprisonment for life in the gloomy cells of a dungeon."

But the natives decided not to kill them; and our narrator even met an Englishman who had lived here some 29 years after fleeing his ship. He now was an elder and had no wish to go home. (Holden himself observes of the islanders that "to the latest day of our lives we shall remember some of them with heartfelt respect and affection.)
Still, catering for this group of Americans proved a drain on resources, and an attempt was made to build them a boat and help them sail away. And this is when they end up on the nearby - and very different - Lord North Island, "one of the most horrible and wretched on the face of the globe"...
Interesting to read of life in this part of the world in the early part of the 19th century. I read this in one sitting… (meer)