50,000 feet of underwater footage was shot for this film, with a final total of 60 reels shot during the 22 weeks of production. It was eventually released as an 8-reel feature.
The film was banned in Germany; French censors deleted scenes of natives being contracted unknowingly for 5 years of hard labor.
Prologue: "Below the equator, amongst those distant isles where the shadow of the white man's civilization is but a rumor, force and war still play their parts in the wooing of a maiden. Men of one island, like their fathers before them, still raid the neighbors when in search of wives. "