Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 3.djvu/174



The following reminiscences of Horace Holden, of Salem, Oregon, in regard to his adventures in the Pacific Ocean, among the cannibals of Polynesia, are of great interest and also possess great value.

For one thing they are told by a man now in his ninety-first year, and relate to a period about seventy years past. Again they illustrate how Oregon became the beneficiary of almost all the early enterprises in the Pacific Ocean, either one way or another, and gained her citizens from the most adventurous and enterprising of all classes of men, both by land and sea. Still further, they are an account hardly equalled in history of wild adventure, furnishing a good model, in fact, for the romancer upon which to base thrilling narrative. It is indeed doubtful whether Verne, or Stevenson, or Haggard would dare to invent such a chain of incident, reaching so often the boundaries of improbability, and passing so often the usual limits of human endurance. In this view it is seen that writers of fiction do probably owe the most of their creations to men who have performed in fact the deeds that they arrange in striking form. Ethnologically, 'also, such accounts furnish pictures, and record the habits and feelings of islanders as yet almost wholly unaffected by the white man's civilization; and draw a comparison between the mental or moral qualities of the civilized and uncivilized man.

As to verifying these stories, there is, of course, no means at hand; yet Mr. Holden gives them as simply a detail of sober fact, every incident of which actually