Wanderings among South Sea Savages and in Borneo and the Philippines

In a book of this kind it is often the custom to begin by making apologies. In my case I feel it to be a sheer necessity. In the first place what is here printed is for the greater part copied word for word from private letters that I wrote in very simple language in Dayak or Negrito huts, or in the lonely depths of tropical forests, in the far-off islands of the Southern Seas. I purposely made my letters home as concise as possible, so that they could be easily read, and in consequence have left out much that might have been interesting. It is almost unnecessary to mention that when I wrote these letters I had no thought whatever of writing a book.