“Disgraceful.”

Experienced South Seas Trav eller Slates Shipping Facilities in Central Pacific Groups.

in on Sydney by the Mon terey on March 23 after a visit to Pago Pago, Apia, and Fiji, Mr. William J. Candler, well-known Inspector for the flour-milling company of Gillespie Bros.

Ltd., of Pyrmont, N.S.W., tarried just long enough to shake off the scent of Poly nesia before he turned his restless foot steps towards Thursday Island and the Dutch East Indies.

For over 25 years Mr. Candler has been travelling in and about the South Seas.

He has seen and talked with all the cele brities of the Pacific, and he admits that he is “the last of the old Mohicans”— those who traded in the Islands in the days when travel was not as comfortable even as it is now.

Still, he declared with emphasis, travel in the Central Pacific Groups left a lot to be desired, and as Mr. Candler yearly covers an average of about 50,000 miles he has the right to speak. He complained with feeling of the lack of facilities for journeying round the Islands in comfort, pointing out that the sea voyage between Eastern and American Samoa had to be covered in a 20-ton boat. Otherwise the traveller had to get about as best he could.

The Union S.S. Co.’s new vessel, which within a few months would commence a regular service to the Islands from Auck land, would be of great assistance to both inhabitants and visitors. At present, he declared, the position was “disgraceful.”

For the novelist who sees in the South Seas a romantic field for imaginative writing Mr. Candler shares the contempt held by most people well versed in the Pacific. He had met some of them, he said, and intimated that he had not been greatly impressed. They spent a few days on an island, he said, and appeared to think that sufficient to acquire a full knowledge of the geography, tribal cus toms, ceremonial, and general atmosphere.

As for the legend that the Islands were no place for a white man, that, too, was a misconception. If a man avoided ex cess in eating, and drinking, and in other ways lived a normal, healthy life there was no reason why he should not spend a very happy life in the Pacific Islands.

As an instance, he quoted "the most respected old identity” of those parts, Captain David Robbie, one-time trader and Mayor of Levuka. Captain Robbie was now living more or less in retirement, though still interested in a tea plantation, but at the age of 88 years he had fine health.

Mr. M. G. Irwin, M.A., who has been appointed secondary assistant at the Suva Boys’ Grammar School, arrived in Fiji from New Zealand by the Aorangi on March 6.

Rev. and Mrs. E. R. Elder, Anglican missionaries among the Fiji Indians, ar rived in Sydney in March to spend fur lough.

Captain George B. Landenberger, U.S.N., who was Governor of American Samoa between 1932 and 1934, died re cently at the Philadelphia Navy Hos pital, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. He was 54 years of age, and is survived by his wife and a daughter, Helen.