Samoa's Beautiful

Waterfalls

Re-discovery of "Schultz's Shower

IT is worthy of note that an organi sation of Apia citizens, under the presidency of Mr. A. G. Smyth, named the Town Planning Committee, is taking steps to open up the numerous waterfalls for the use and pleasure of citizens and tourists.

These waterfalls of Upolu, Western Samoa, are almost unique. They come pouring down off the tableland, at many places along the littoral; and, buried in the cool jungle, they provide shower-

baths and bathing-pools about which poets and similarly romantic people have raved for 50 years.

Some of these delightful waterfalls have been allowed to return to the primitive jungle; but the new committee is now planning to make most of them readily accessible.

Steps are being taken to open up a beautiful little waterfall at a place called Seseu, in Luatuanu’u village, eight miles from Apia, on the Falefa road. Inquiries by Mr. Smyth and Mr. Hufnagel-Betham show that this waterfall is no other than what was known before 1914 as “Dr.

Schultz’s Shower.”

Some 40 to 50 feet above the level of the East Coast road and a little inland of the village of Luatuanu’u runs a ledge, or tableland, upon which the village plantations are situated (says the Western Samoan Mail).

This ledge is of crescent shape and it is at its eastern tip, where the stream of this tableland above leaps out through a setting of ferns and other greeneries into space, descending like a brilliant rocket of clear cool water. Bubbling below is the inviting pool where so often in the past the late Dr. E. Schultz- Ewerth, Governor of Western Samoa when war broke out, used to bathe, some times at six o’clock in the morning.

It is suggested that the committee adopt the name by which this waterfall was sometimes referred to in the happier days of long ago. Not only is the refer ence deserving to the memory of the late Dr, Schultz, who was a sincere friend of the people of these Isles, and a student of Polynesian history, but it would also prove a tourist attraction to visitors from overseas, being within 100 yards from the Main Beach road where cars and ’buses regularly pass.

recent photograph of “Schultz’s Shower”. The figures in the foreground show by comparison the height of the waterfall.