The Cruise of the "Janet Nichol" Among the South Sea Islands - A Diary #225452

One reason I have hesitated a little to give for publishing this diary, is the extraordinary num ber of books now being printed purporting to give accurate accounts of our lives on board ship and elsewhere, by persons with whom we were very slightly acquainted, or had never consciously met. I have read, among other misstatements, of the making of the flag for Tembinoka, by the writer and my daughter on the beach at Apemama. The flag was designed by me, on board the schooner Equator, and made, in the most prosaic manner, by a firm in Sydney. No one, outside our immediate family, sailed with us on any of our cruises. All the books With Stevenson here, and With Stevenson there, are manufactured out of such stuff as dreams are made on, and false in almost every particular. Contrary to the general idea, my husband was a man of few intimate friends, and even with these he was reticent to a degree.