Cook Group

25 Dead!

Influenza’s Toll on Manihiki, Cook Group

From Our Own Correspondent

Rarotonga, April 19.

XJARBINGERS of bad news, the A schooner Tiare Taporo and Tagua berthed here almost simultaneously early on April 16, after their annual hiberna tion in Penrhyn lagoon.

Imagine hearing that 5 per cent, of the population of Australia had lost their lives in an epidemic. Nearly half a mil lion people dead! The figures would startle and appal the world. But a lonely atoll may lose 25 of its 500 Inhabitants and not a whisper of the tragedy ever reach a single newspaper reader.

Carried north by one or other of the schooners on her last trip before the huricane season, influenza germs wrecked havoc among people unaccustomed to and incompetent to deal with European diseases. In Manihiki 25 died, including the Resident Agent (Captain J. McCul loch) and on the neighbouring island of Rakahanga a further five.

With these more primitive folk, death is a portentous affair, frequently involving a full year’s residence beside the grave of the deceased, the burial of many valued possessions and occasionally the adoption by the survivor of the departed’s wearing apparel. Not so long ago the strange spectacle was witnessed in Rakahanga of a gaunt elderly man who for months went about his affairs wearing the gar ments of his late wife.

Hon. A. A. Wright, who has been Sec retary for Native Affairs and Acting Col onial Secretary in Fiji and for a space Acting Governor of Fiji, has been ap pointed Administrator and Colonial Secre tary of St. Vincent in the Windward Islands, in succession to Mr. A. F. Grimble.