New Inter-Island

Service

From Tahiti Through French Oceania

From Our Own Correspondent PAPEETE, March 22.

THROUGH the medium of these notes it was stated, some time ago, that the Messageries Maritimes Company intended taking over the 600-tons steamer, “Ville de Papeete,” with a view to the inaugura tion of an inter-island service for French Oceania.

It will interest prospective visitors to Tahiti to learn that this vessel is now running on a regular timetable, and that it is now possible to visit many of the outer Islands of the Tuamotu, Austral, and Gambler Archipelagoes, without the vexatious delays and uncertainties inci dental to travelling on a trading schooner.

Undoubtedly, the “Ville de Papeete” will be a formidable competitor of the many privately-owned schooners operat ing in these waters, which in general have proved anything but a profitable invest ment for their owners, and we may ex pect to see their number gradually be coming less, as time goes on and it will no longer pay to keep them in repair.

But the graceful native-built cutters of the Tuamotus, which carry no engines, and whose owners avoid ship-yard ex penses by doing their own repairs, will continue to run to Papeete, loaded down to the rails with copra and other Tua motu’n produce.

From the point of view of the tourist, and the business man who is obliged to make periodical trips among these scat tered Islands, the new service is a wel come innovation.

The “Ville de Papeete”—which really belongs to the Compagne des Phosphates de l’Oceanie, and is at present only under charter to the Messageries Co. — makes a round trip through the Leeward Group every seven weeks (Raiatea, Hua hine, Borabora, etc.); and has two alter native itineraries through the Tuamotus and Gambiers, each every seven weeks, in the course of which 13 different islands are touched at regularly, and other places according to circumstances.