Solomon Islands News

Interest in New Trade Tobacco

From Our Own Correspondent.

TULAGI, August 2.

SETTLERS in the Islands are awaiting with interest a trial shipment of Aus tralian tobacco for ration use and sale to natives, which is now on the market.

Owing to the preferential tariff, this tobacco should land much cheaper than the American brands now in use. Being cheaper, large quantities will probably be sold and used, so that in spite of the lighter duty, the revenue stands quite a chance of a slight increase, owing to in creased importations.

The whole question is—Will the natives take to the Australian tobacco? All plan ters who have tried improvements in the way of diet, and like innovations, know how stubbornly suspicious the native is, and how opposed to anything he is not used to. As a ration the employer qould issue it, but if offered for sale and not found acceptable to the native, its im portation for trade purposes ends.

It is to be hoped that the manufac turers of this tobacco have been success ful in producing an article acceptable to the natives; if so, the community will re ceive it with open arms, and rejoice that more business is going to Australian pro ducers.

An auction room is now in course of erection at Tulagi. Although the com munity is small, several successful auc tion sales have taken place in temporary premises, and it is remarkable how the idea has taken on. The depression, com pelling sellers to realize on any saleable assets, and buyers to seek goods where they can be obtained cheapest, has pos sibly interested the public, where pros perity would have! found folk indifferent.

Combined with the auction market is the Lending Library, of which the auc tioning is an offshoot. This Library is the only one available to the general public. These two enterprises add to the interest of life in our little capital, quite brightening our Saturday afternoons, and a little curiosity is felt as to the nature of Mr. Buchanan’s, next enterprise.

Handy to the auction mart, Stirling’s Hotel has come back to life, the restaur ant and residential section being now under the able management of Mrs. R.

Sims. It is now possible to obtain a real cup of tea, not to mention ice creams, and excellent meals, right in the centre of Chinatown.

Do these new enterprises and the re vival of Stirling’s Hotel —the very name of which suggests the good days—herald the departure of bad times?

A Missing Official.

Some concern was felt, in Shortlands district recently when Mr. Bartlett, the Acting District Officer, failed to return at the appointed time from a trip across Shortland Island, from Koravo, the Go vernment station, to Harapa Estate. Mr.

Seton, of Loping, manager of the Short land Estates, made his way to Harapa, and saw no trace of the launch which was to meet Mr. Bartlett and convey him back to Faisi. Consternation reigned in Faisi, and a launch was about to be des patched to Kieta, to send a wireless to Tulagi, when the wanderers, having got the launch to go, returned.

Death Of Mr. C. E. Minns

At about 3 a.m. on Saturday, May 5th, Mr. C. E. Minns, a settler of over ten years’ standing, passed away in a Chinese hut on Tulagi waterfront. Mr. Minns served with the A.I.F., and, later, while resident in the Solomons, did his bit in the Sinarangs Expedition. He arrived in the Group “with a bump,” as he used to say, when the “Forest Home,” one of the American sailing ships which started the direct overseas export of copra, hit the reef at Pari Pili. It looked for a while as if the ship would remain in the Group, but fortunately she floated off, and when they got to Tulagi, it was Mr. Minns who decided to remain. He had numerous schooner and shore jobs in the decade or so he lived here, having tried trading ashore and afloat, recruiting, freight and plantation management; and in intervals of unemployment he earned what he could at sail making and similar jobs. A red-letter day was that on which he won £2000 in an Australian consultation.

When compelled by ill-health to reside at Tulagi where he could be a hospital outpatient, Mr. Minns with characteristic independence and self-reliance, took up his residence under a humble Chinese roof and eked out a living at boot repairing, tallying, and any odd job that turned up which his bad arm permitted him to

tackle. A week or so before his death Mr. Minns had suffered injury to his arm from a stone thrown by a native. The offender was to have been tried on the day Mr. Minns passed away. No trial was held.

Escape Of Southern Cross.

The Melanesian Mission’s motor ship, “Southern Cross,” at one time, looked like emulating her predecessor, which was wrecked before she ever reached the Solomons. She arrived from a tour of the diocese, and anchored at Tulagi. The south-east weather has lately been very bad, most of the vessels usually anchor ing in Tulagi Harbour having run to shel ter at Ellis Cove. The “Southern Cross,” anchored off Chinatown, began to drag, and the ship was within a few yards of going ashore on the Celestial waterfront.

Perhaps she was envious of the remains of the “Wyalong,” now a romantic skeleton in front of W. R. Carpenter’s store. How ever, the engine started more promptly than ever before in its brief existence, and the vessel got away just in time. She went to Makambo wharf and made fast for the rest of the blow.

Tulagi Hotel Burned

Another fire has taken place in the Solomons. At 12 p.m. on the night of July 27th, Elkington’s Hotel blazed up, and was burnt to the ground. The build ing was a fairly old one, and featured largely in the social life of Tulagi. Tour ists to the Islands will all have recol lection of dances held there every steamer, and planters and traders, par ticularly married men, who have been accustomed to depend on the hotel to stay at steamer time, and during other visits to Tulagi, will greatly miss the place. All old Islanders will remember the late Mr. T. Elkington and his “pub” as a feature of the township. The Hotel was owned by Messrs. Johnson and Ma ther, and was under the able management of Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Fyfe.

For the last year or so, fires have been very prevalent, over a wide area; in a couple of decades in the past, not so many fires have taken place—not since the natives dropped their cheerful habit of burning up trading stations. Settlers wonder whether the present recurrence is a result of a reversion to type on the part of the natives. Fires of the last year or so have included valuable copra driers and sheds, Burns Philp’s quarters at Makambo, and now the hotel.