Huge Feast In
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Cook Is.
Opening of New L.M.S. Church at Ngatangiia
From Our Own Correspondent RAROTONGA, December 29.
THE Administration declared an official holiday for the opening of the London Missionary Society’s new church at Ngatangiia on December 18.
The new building, which has been in course of construction since 1911, is an imposing block of dressed coral-lime with a double row of tall windows and a pleas ing interior colour scheme. Erected en tirely by voluntary labour, the cost of the materials used has been subscribed among the natives of Ngatangiia and district, in whose possession the building remained until formally handed over to the Society.
Monetary collections had been made throughout the island towards the cost of defraying the expenses connected with the feast held immediately after the opening ceremony, and which was attended by
fully 1000 people, including the majority of European residents. Half an acre of ground was covered by the heaped car casses of pigs, surmounting piles of baked taro and kumura, all of which were later distributed among the donors of gifts to the new building.
Under a kikau pavilion erected for the day, long tables had been set up, loaded with native-cooked foodstuffs which rapid ly disappeared under the onslaughts of relays of feasters, European and leading native visitors taking first innings.
The expenditure involved by all this, coming on the heels of this year’s hurri cane, put the people of Ngatangiia to severe straits to meet the levy imposed by those who decided to conduct operations on such a lavish scale. In several in stances, men sold ploughs and other useful articles in order to provide the required pig, while one Avarua supercargo took advantage of the situation to secure a number of next season’s orange crops at relatively small cost.
The occasion is reminiscent of a similar event in Mangaia 44 years ago, when two large bullocks and over 800 pigs were killed, the total value well exceeding £lOOO, and of which not a single trace remained twenty-four hours later. Mr. F. J. Moss, the newly appointed British Resident Agent there, commenting, in his official re port, on the scarcity and deprivation which would inevitably follow, concluded with the remark that “meanwhile nothing in the way of business could be done” —a state ment that found its echo in the order which declared Wednesday the 18th a whole holiday.