Main journal entries written from Taviuni (Taveuni?), Macuata, Vanua Levu, Koroivono and Levuka, Fiji; on board schooner "Daphne" towards Futuna and Uvea; at Futuna and Uvea; on board schooner "Louisa Ryder" towards Samoa; Apia, Mulifanua and Falelatai, Samoa; Tutuial (now American Samoa); on board barque "Metaris" towards Fiji; on board schooner "Pio Nono" towards Samoa.

James Lyle Young (1849-1929) was born in Londonderry (Derry), Ireland, and went to Australia with his parents in the mid-1850s. After working in Australia as a station hand, Young, in 1870, went to Fiji where he was associated for five years with a cotton-planting venture at Taveuni. In April, 1875, he left Fiji on a trading voyage to Samoa via Futuna and Wallis Island.

The journal gives a vivid account of Young's life during three of his most adventurous years. It begins with a trading voyage round the Macuata coast of Fiji followed by a voyage to Samoa via Futuna and Wallis Islands. In Samoa, Young saw a great deal of the American adventurer, Colonel A.B. Steinberger, who headed the Samoan Government for 10 extraordinary months. After playing a prominent part in the events that led to Steinberger's downfall, Young sailed for the Marshall Islands in May, 1876, to open a trading station for Thomas Farrell at Ebon Atoll. He remained in Farrell's employ until November, 1877 when he went to Majuro.
See also PMB MS 22 and 23 and the Bureau's newsletter Pambu, Dec. 1968:5, pp.1-12.

‘A Paradise of the Gods. Writings and Drawings of Handley Bathurst Sterndale.’ is an unpublished digital edition edited by J.J. Overell. In 1870, Handley Bathurst Sterndale worked as a surveyor on the island of Upolu, Samoa, for the German trading company Goddefroy & Sohn. In this capacity, he made an expedition across Upolu, making notes and sketches about the journey as he went. In 1871, on Motu Kotawa on the islet of Pukapuka atoll in the Cook Islands, he worked these notes into the manuscript ‘Upolu; or, A Paradise of the Gods’, and worked his sketches into finished drawings. Some accounts are not his first hand observations and others are demonstrably wrong. Sterndale sought to have the manuscript published, but was unsuccessful in finding a publisher before his death in 1878. After his death, it was listed in a catalogue among the publications of Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington of London, but the manuscript never made it to print.

The original notebooks have since been lost, but the surviving manuscript and drawings have been passed down to Sterndale’s descendants. This edition brings together edited excerpts from Sterndale’s original manuscript and is illustrated with his original drawings, which were digitised by photographer Rod Howe. It also includes a detailed introduction by editor J.J. Overell, and contextual chapters on the geology of Upolu, a chronology of Sterndale’s life and detailed appendices, including a complete transcript of the original manuscript.

Subjects covered by Sterndale include beachcombers, Samoan cultural beliefs and practices, civil conflict, diet, agriculture, wildlife, disease - amongst others. In addition to Upolu, Sterndale writes about Levuka in Fiji and Easter Island or Rapa Nui.

The Oceania Marist Province Archives Series (OMPA) is the result of a special project during which records of the Catholic Church in islands of the Western Pacific were copied by Father Theo B. Cook, SM in collaboration with the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau. (Cook was born Theodorus Bernardus Wilhelmus Kok but chose to go by the name Cook in Australia: Povey, 2010). The OMPA series covers the Diocese of Tonga (OMPA 1-25), Diocese of Samoa and Tokelau (OMPA 26-74), Marist Fathers, Rome (OMPA 80-100), Diocese of Wallis and Futuna (OMPA 101-126), Diocese of Port Vila (OMPA 127-178), Archdiocese of Noumea (OMPA 179-360) and the Oceania Marist Province Archives (OMPA 361-400).

Detailed indexes were prepared for the six diocese and those records copied in Rome. These can be found at http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/pambu/collections/microfilm.php or compiled in The Catholic Church in the Western Pacific: a guide to records on microfilm (Robert Langdon, ed.), Canberra, 1986.

Fison (1832-1907) a university-educated man, with a keen interest in anthropology, was born in Suffolk, England. He migrated to Australia in 1856, joined the Methodist Church, and went to Fiji as a Wesleyan missionary in 1864. He remained in Fiji until 1884, when he returned to Australia and became editor of the Spectator, a Melbourne church paper.

Copies of letters, notes on Fiji customs and personalities, sketches of life in Fiji, and an early draft of Fison's book 'Tales of Old Fiji' (London, 1907). The wording of some of the tales, as recorded in these papers, has been much worked over and occasionally differs in its final form from that in the published versions.