The most important city of the Fiji Islands is Suva, a port of call for all steamers from America to Australia and New Zealand.
The capital of Samoa is Apia.
Another island of which you sometimes hear is Guam in the Ladrones, half way between Japan and New Guinea and an important American cable station.
Then there is Tahiti, a French possession among the Society Islands, where the South Sea movie stories are supposed to come from.
Finally there are dozens and dozens of other islands belonging to the three general groups of Melanesia and Micronesia and Polynesia. They seem to form regular barriers across the Pacific, running in three parallel lines from north-west to south-east and making navigation in the Pacific something very different from that in the Atlantic, where Rockall is the only danger spot between Ireland and the American coast.
It is said that these islands offer a most agreeable home to all those who find our modern machine-made civilization too complicated for their simple tastes and who prefer peace and quiet and agreeable companions to noise and hurry and the angry looks of jealous competitors. I suppose they are more restful than, let us say, the corner of Broadway and Forty-Second Street. But they are so dreadfully far away – and do they really grow a herb that will allow the average man to escape from himself?