enjoyment, and from whom are removed so many of the ills and pains of life—what has he to desire at the hands of Civilization? Will he be the happier? Let the once smiling and populous Hawaiian islands, with their now diseased, starving, and dying natives, answer the question. The missionaries may seek to disguise the matter as they will, but the facts are incontrovertible. The Knickerbocker called Typee "a piece of Münchhausenism." New York publisher Evert Augustus Duyckinck wrote to Nathaniel Hawthorne that "it is a lively and pleasant book, not over philosophical perhaps." In 1939, Charles Robert Anderson published Melville in the South Seas in which he elaborated on a number of Melville's likely sources in supplementing his work and also documented the existence of an affidavit from the Captain of the Acushnet. If the date provided by Captain can be considered accurate, Anderson concludes that Melville's stay in the "Typee Valley" part of the island would have been merely "four weeks, or possible eight weeks at the most." However, in trying to determine the end date of Melville's stay, Anderson primarily relies on Melville's own internal accounts of various events, for instance that he was rescued from the valley on a "Monday." In summing up his view of Typee, Anderson writes: For the general student of Melville, the detailed analysis and verification of these matters... probably reveals an accuracy scarcely to be expected. Without hesitation it can be said that in general this volume presents faithful delineation of the island life and scenery in precivilization Nukahiva, with the exception of numerous embellishments and some minor errors... All of the initial back and forth which Melville experienced regarding the factuality of Typee may have had a chastening effect on him, as Anderson considers his next work, the book's sequel Omoo, "the most strictly autobiographical of all Melville's works." But this second book also seems to have met with some skepticism, so that for his third book Mardi, Melville declares in the preface that he has decided to write a work of fiction under the supposition (half-joking) he might finally be believed: Not long ago, having published two narratives of voyages in the Pacific, which, in many quarters, were received with incredulity, the thought occurred to me, of indeed writing a romance of Polynesian adventure, and publishing it as such; to whether, the fiction might not, possibly be received for