Omoo

OMOO BY HERMAN MELVILLE EDITORS NOTE OMOO is so close a sequel to Typee, that it almost forms a part of that work. Herman Melvilles second book appeared in 1847, published as its fore runner had been the year before simultaneously in London and New York. In Omoo, as Mr. Arthur Stedman says We leave for the most part the dreamy pictures of island life, and find ourselves sharing the extremely realistic discomforts of a Sydney whaler in the early forties. Both books are without a doubt largely autobiographical, and based on the writers early sea-adventures, of which his voyage in the . Acushnet in 1841-2 was the most memorable. Herman Melville was born in New York, on August i, 1819, and came of mixed Dutch and English stock. His father was a merchant, and died before the boy left school, whose charge then devolved on an uncle, a well to-do farmer. But Herman, wishing to be free, soon declared a love for the sea, and made his first voyage as a cabin-boy. After leaving the sea finally in 1842, Melville lived first in New York, and then for many years near Pittsville, where he had for a time Nathaniel Hawthorne as his neighbour. For fuller particulars of his career, see the introduction to the companion volume of Typee He died in New York, on Septem ber 28, 1891. The following is the list of his published volumes. E. R. December, 1907. Typee Narrative of a Four Months Residence among the Natives of a Valley of the Marquesas Islands, etc., 1846 Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas, 1847 Mardi, and a Voyage Thither, 1848 Redburn, his First Voyage, 1848 White Jacket or, The World in a Man of War, 1850 The Whale or, Moby Dick, 1851 Pierre or, The Ambiguities, 1852 Israel Potter hisFifty Years of Exile, 1855 The Piazza Tales, 1856 The Confidence Man, his Masquerade, 1857 Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War, 1866 Clarel a Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land, 1876. 297 vii PREFACE NOWHERE, perhaps, are the proverbial characteristics of sailors shown under wilder aspects than in the South Seas. For the most part, the vessels navigating those remote waters are engaged in the Sperm Whale Fishery a business which is not only peculiarly fitted to attract the most reckless seamen of all nations, but, in various ways, is calculated to foster in them a spirit of the utmost licence. These voyages, also, are unusually long and perilous the only harbours accessible are among the bar barous or semi-civilized islands of Polynesia, or along the lawless western coast of South America. Hence, scenes the most novel, and not directly connected with the business of whaling, frequently occur among the crews of ships in the Pacific. Without pretending to give any account of the whale fishery for the scope of the narrative does not embrace the subject, it is, partly, the object of this work to convey some idea of the kind of life to which allusion is made by means of a circumstantial history of adventures befalling the author. Another object proposed is to give a familiar account of the present condition of the converted Polynesians, as affected by their promiscuous intercourse with foreigners, and the teachings of the missionaries, combined...