Upon A Stone Altar

Upon a Stone Altar tells the history of a remarkable people who inhabit the island of Pohnpei in the Eastern Caroline Islands of Micronesia. Since the beginnings of intensive foreign contact, Pohnpei has endured numerous disruptive conflicts as well as attempts at colonial domination. Pohnpeians creatively adapted to change and today live successfully in a modern world not totally of their own making. Hanlon uses the vast body of oral tradition to relate the early history of Pohnpei, including the story of the building of a huge complex of artificial stone islets, Nan Madol.

Englishman James Headley signs on as second mate on the whaling ship Falcon in 1836. En route from Australia to the northern whaling grounds, the ship is hit hard and damaged by a typhoon, but it manages to limp into the Pohnpei Harbor. While the Falcon is undergoing repairs, Headley falls in love with an island princess. When the ship gets underway again, just as it is about to clear the harbor, it runs aground on a hidden reef. The captain and four crew members are killed by savage islanders, but Headley manages to escape to the safety of his princess tribe. In the years that follow, Headley finds himself working as a respected harbor pilot, a general store owner, and a mediator between missionaries, local chiefs, and a group of outlaws hiding on Pohnpei. The group of outlaws has grown to include men who have deserted their ships or are escaping from prisons, all of whom are taking advantage of the local islanders. One such rascal, Captain Black Heart Hart decides to kill the entire male population of Ngatik to seize the treasured tortoise shell and ravish the islands females. Based loosely upon a true story, The Royal Headley of Pohnpei follows the chaotic life and times of a charismatic adventurer!

Reprint of the original, first published in 1864. The Heavenly Mysteries contained in the Holy scriptures, or word of the lord, unfolded, in an exposition of genesis and exodus. Together with a relation of wonderful things seen in the world od spirits and in the heaven of angels. In twelve volumes.

NEWLYN Away beyond the village stands a white cottage with the sea lapping at low cliffs beneath it. Plum and apple orchards slope upward behind this building, and already, upon the former trees, there trembles a snowy gauze where blossom buds are breaking. Higher yet, dark plowed fields, with hedges whereon grow straight elms, cover the undulations of a great hill even to its windy crest, and below, at the water line, lies Newlyn—a village of gray stone and blue, with slate roofs now shining silver-bright under morning sunlight and easterly wind. Smoke softens every outline; red-brick walls and tanned sails bring warmth and color through the blue vapor of many chimneys; a sun-flash glitters at this point and that, denoting here a conservatory, there a studio. Enter this hive and you shall find a network of narrow stone streets; a flutter of flannel underwear, or blue stockings, and tawny garments drying upon lines; little windows, some with rows of oranges and ginger-beer bottles in them; little shops; little doors, at which cluster little children and many cats, the latter mostly tortoise-shell and white. Infants watch their elders playing marbles in the roadway, and the cats stretch lazy bodies on the mats, made of old fishing-net, which lie at every cottage door. Newlyn stands on slight elevations above the sea level, and at one point the road bends downward, breaks and fringes the tide, leading among broken iron, rusty anchors, and dismantled fishing-boats, past an ancient buoy whose sides now serve the purposes of advertisement and tell of prayer-meetings, cheap tea, and so forth.