Lost Paradise: The Exploration of the Pacific (Ian Cameron)

Ian Cameron, Lost Paradise: The Exploration of the Pacific. London: Century, 1987.

Small quarto, hard cover, dustwrapper, 248 pages, black-and-white illustrations, colour plates in the pagination.

***Fine condition.***

A treasure trove of vicarious travel.

'The European seamen who explored the Pacific made some of the longest and most hazardous voyages in history. They had to endure squalor, brutality, hunger, thirst and an appalling death rate. However, when they reached the islands of the central Pacific they were made welcome by a people who, in innocence, offered them food, drink, shelter, and sex, and asked for nothing in return. 'What a country!' wrote the French explorer de Bougainville, 'What a people! I thought I had been transported to Paradise.'

'Yet within a century of de Bougainville's landing, the people of the Pacific islands had been decimated by deprivation, disease and the total collapse of their culture - left with nothing to look forward to but 'going into the night to join the spirits of their ancestors'. Paradise had been found. And lost.'