Excerpt from The Western Pacific: Being a Description of the Groups of Islands to the North and East of the Australian Continent The attitude taken by the Australian Colonies with reference to the island-continent of New Guinea and the groups of islands in the Western Pacific, has taken England altogether by surprise. I venture also to think that the vast majority of English people find themselves entirely in the dark as regards the islands which it is proposed to annex. The present volume aims at giving some general idea of these islands from my own personal experience, and is mainly a reprint from a portion of a larger book of travel. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.