Fiji Jim.

Adventurous Life of a Samoan Among the Esquimaux.

Specially written for The Pacific Islands Monthly hy A.M.G.

THERE is still romance to be found in the sober and sordid lives of present day man. Here is evidence in the eventful life of Fiji Jim or Jim Asesela, a native of Samoa, who is reported missing from his adopted home in the far north of the Polar regions. The re port of his strange career reads like a chapter of a sensational novel.

Fiji Jim was one of a troupe of native Samoan dancers and performers, who were picked and conducted by the late

Mr. H. J. Moors, an American merchant and pioneer of Apia, Samoa, and a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, to show a picture of Samoan native life at the World’s Exhibition of Chicago, 1893.

The Exhibition over, Fiji Jim went to San Francisco to wait for a boat to take him back to his Samoan home. There he met a few Hawaiian sailors and, hav ing made friends with them, they per suaded him to sign on a sailing vessel just leaving for the north. The young Samoan had had his first touch with western civilisation and it fascinated him. So he went out and looked for ad venture.

The vessel went to Herschel Island, about 300 miles inside the Arctic Circle, and the young Samoan had, without be ing aware of the fact, made an agreement to serve three years on the vessel. But, contrary to expectations, the son of the sunny south got well used to the hard ships of the Polar climate and even liked them, so that after his safe return to San Francisco, he went back to the north on another whaler. He became a hunter and trapper in the lonely regions of the far north, and hardly ever think ing of his faraway home in the palmy islands of the Southern Seas, he was perfectly happy in his new surroundings.

In 1906 the Canadian explorer Stefans son met him the first time, became in terested in him and got him to sign on as guide of his expeditions to the Polar regions for the next three years.

Stefansson declared that Fiji Jim was one of the best men he ever met in the north. He was a splendid worker, tem perate and good-natured, skilful in hunting and trapping, and unafraid of any of the dangers confronting the in habitant of the Polar region. He had

made quite a fortune by hunting and trapping, but never kept the money with him, having it deposited in a bank.

His savings are said to amount to about 40,000 dollars and they would have made him an exceptionally rich man among his Samoan countrymen at home.

In 1917 Stefansson counselled Jim to return to Samoa. With his hard-gained money he should spend the remainder of his life at well-earned rest.

Jim went to San Francisco for the second time, to return to Sunny Samoa.

By chance, he met a Samoan, who told him all about the new order in Samoa and about conditions there, and Jim did not like the tale. He found it much too hot, even in temperate San Francisco.

How, then, could be stand the tropical heat of Samoa? No, not for him any more! The lure of the far north proved too much. Jim returned to his adopted home in the far north and ever since re mained true to it.

Newspaper reports state now that Fiji Jim has been missing for the last four months. It is reported from Vancouver that a thorough search by the Royal Mounted Police along the coasts of the Polar Sea, where he put out his traps, proved fruitless, and it is feared that he was driven out to sea on floating ice, never to return. The Esquimaux, who missed him first, were superstitious and therefore did not try to save him. But they told of his disappearance to a mis sionary, Father Griffin, who in turn in formed the authorities.

Scientists have pointed to the life story of Fiji Jim as a striking instance of the adaptability of man to contrary climatic conditions.