Rice For Tahiti

A Chinese Syndicate’s Plans

Antimaono’S Interesting

History

From Our Own Correspondent TAHITI, September 20.

THE old established coconut and sugar plantation of Antimaono, situated in the Papara district of Tahiti, has been leased to a Chin ese syndicate by the local company that owns the property.

This land was acquired many years ago by a Mr. Stuart, who made a for tune out of it when cotton soared to unheard-of prices during the Ameri can war.

Stuart brought labourers from the Gilbert Islands, and, incidentally, the first Chinese coolies to be imported into the Society Islands, to work his cotton fields, while he himself lorded it in the grand style of an old-time West Indian planter. A few crumb ling foundations are all that now re main of Stuart’s once luxurious home on the beach. But a clump of noble mango trees on the heights above the present sugar mill still marks the site of “Montcalm,” where the cotton king of Tahiti built his mountain castle, and to which he was regularly carried in a litter, by relays of faith ful retainers.

With the fall of cotton prices, Anti maono plantation went over to sugar and, later on, to coconuts also, and for many years afterwards it enjoyed control of the small but highly re munerative local market for sugar, protected as it was against importa tions from foreign sources. With the opening of the Panama canal, how ever. French sugar grown in Marti nique began to compete with the local product, to an extent that made oper ations on Antimaono less and less profitable, as time went on.

Of late years, the property has changed hands several times and en countered a series of vicissitudes. Not only has sugar slumped, but copra also and, with it, cattle values have fallen on the local market to about one-third of the figure obtainable two years ago.

Antimaono is the only considerable tract of first-class agricultural land, under one ownership in Tahiti, and it will be interesting to observe just what the Chinese Syndicate will do with it. There are rumours that they intend turning the sugar fields over to rice and, as there is plenty of water available, this sounds feasible enough.

Rice has been grown in these is lands very successfully by small Chin ese cultivators, particularly in Moo rea, where there are some large areas of swamp land, but nothing has so far been attempted on the scale pro jected at Antimaono.

Large quantities of rice are im ported annually from China proper and French Indo-China. A good deal of it is consumed by the natives of the Tuamotu archipelago, where nat ure does not provide much in the way of foodstuffs, except fish and coco nuts. But the bulk of the imported rice goes to feed the growing Chinese population of Tahiti and the adiacent Islands. It may be that friend China man has hit upon an idea, by harvesting three crops as against one in China. That will kill the imported article and set Antimaono on its legs again.