CUMNER’S SON AND OTHER SOUTH SEA FOLK
by Gilbert Parker
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CUMNER’S SON
I. THE CHOOSING OF THE MESSENGER
II. "REST AT THE KOONGAT BRIDGE AN HOUR”
III. THE CODE OF THE HILLS
IV. BY THE OLD WELL OF JAHAR
V. CHOOSE YE WHOM YE WILL SERVE
VI. CONCERNING THE DAUGHTER OF CUSHNAN DI
VII. THE RED PLAGUE
VIII. THE CHOOSING OF THE DAKOON
IX. THE PROPHET OF PEACE
INTRODUCTION
In a Foreword to Donovan Pasha, published in 1902, I used the following words:
“It is now twelve years since I began giving to the public tales of life in lands well known to me. The first of them were drawn from Australia and the islands of the southern Pacific, where I had lived and roamed in the middle and late eighties.... Those tales of the Far South were given out with some prodigality. They did not appear in book form, however; for at the time I was sending out these antipodean sketches I was also writing—far from the scenes where they were laid—a series of Canadian tales, many of which appeared in the ‘Independent’ of New York, in the ‘National Observer’, edited by Mr. Henley, and in the ‘Illustrated Lo