Jim Leslie

The Mal'lam Voyagers Jim Leslie

This is the story of an ancient sea-faring people who explored and settled the vast reaches of the Pacific Ocean before the Polynesians existed as a culture. Fleeing aggressive and avaricious invaders in the second millennium B. C., in what is now called Southeast Asia, their ancestors began to move ever south and eastward to find a new homeland. For three hundred years they found respite in a kindly archipelago just north of the Equator. But then geological forces made these islands uninhabitable and again the Mal'lam became vagabonds upon the great ocean. They roamed again to the south and east, leaving scant traces of their journeys. Who were these mysterious people? It is certain that they were a proto-Polynesian race possessing a keen intelligence and physical stamina, maintaining a highly organized society and technology. Courageous, even reckless explorers, they built and sailed double- hulled canoes of superb craftsmanship and navigated with skill and mental capacity now mostly lost to modern man. What were they like? What motivated them? And what became of them? Sail with us far into the past, and join the adventures of a unique and nearly forgotten people.