Faery Lands of the South Seas (1921) (With Active Table of Contents)

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". . . They returned to Pisco, loaded the gold, and started for Paumotus. In 1859 they landed at Pinaki, where they buried the treasure. The island was uninhabited then as now. ...Most of these facts—if they are facts—I had from Killorain himself the night before he died...."

James Norman Hall was an American author best known for the book "Mutiny on the Bounty" with co-author Charles Nordhoff. During World War I, Hall had the distinction of serving in the militaries of three Western allies: Great Britain as an infantryman and then flying for France and later the United States.

After the war, Hall spent much of his life on the island of Tahiti, where wrote the 1921 true life story "Faery Lands of the South Seas" of his true adventures exploring in the South Pacific. This book has color, charm, and atmosphere without being rhapsodic and gives much information on native types, customs, folk lore, and animal life, as well as a true life unsolved buried treasure story.

The quest of this young man is not in itself remarkable; before the Great War, even before the Industrial Age, others did the same thing. But 'tis said an occasional adventurous or eccentric youth push even to the remotest Paumotus in search of adventure or solitude. We take it they can't stand it any longer; the infinite hubbub and clack of tongues, the greed, the advertisement, the propaganda, the new brutality and vulgarity. They probably apprehend a reign of Communism, and would fain preserve, not their lives merely, but their individuality. Well, one can understand the urge and sympathize. We even admit that we ourselves have felt the urge. If we could choose our isle and could have a library and our forty fiddlers, and, thereto, assured variety of diet, —and solitude; we would chuck Manhattan, hire a schooner, and sail away. That singular recluse Crichton, described by Mr. Hall, could find in the absolute solitude of his island of Tanao compensation for the absence of all the comforts of civilization; even for an unrelieved diet of cocoanuts and fish.

The documentary "Treasure of Tuamatos" revisits Hall's recount of a buried treasure in chapter "XVII. The Englishman's Story" which treasure consists of "thirty-kilo ingots, contained in seven chests, the whole lot worth in the neighborhood of three and a half million pounds."

Hall also wrote a number of other successful adventure books . In addition to the various Bounty films, other film adaptations of his fiction include The Hurricane , which starred his nephew Jon Hall; Passage to Marseille , featuring Humphrey Bogart; and Botany Bay , with Alan Ladd.