The Venture Book

The Venture Book is a travelogue by Elinor Mordaunt. Mordaunt was a English author, writer and traveller exploring here the Tahitian landscape. Excerpt: "All night we have been going dead slow so that we may avoid reaching the tangle of the Tuamotu Archipelago—the Dangerous Isles, as we English call them—at night. Now we are in the midst of hundreds upon hundreds of atolls lying level with the sea, broken rings of coral a few hundred—or less than one hundred—feet broad, with wide-open lagoons inside them and cocoanut-palms on the northwest side, away from the prevailing winds. Rings of coral and scanty sand, simmering in an eternal haze of damp heat, overhung by a thick cloud of mosquitos which looks like a mist about them."