Shore Depots Being Abandoned

The Slump In Central

Pacific

From Our Own Correspondent TAHITI, September 20.

The schooner “Tiare Taporo,” one of Messrs. A. B. Donald’s trading fleet, is in port from the Cook Islands.

Captain Viggo Rasmussen, an old timer who has been knocking around the Eastern Pacific for 40 years, reports a deplorable state of affairs in the remoter parts of the Cook Islands.

There, he says, copra is being sold at one farthing a pound, and yields no profit to the buyer at that. The firms who have done business there for generations are in process of closing up their depots and removing their agents, and, if there is to be any trading done at all in the future, which seems doubtful, it is proposed to conduct it from the ship’s trade room, as in the days of Bully Hayes. ===