Snarling Voyagers

How Tahiti Sees Those " Happy "

World Cruises

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, Mar. 26.

WHEN Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan’s yacht, the Corsair, came into Papeete har bour recently from the United States, bearing a company of harmonious guests she presented a spectacle almost unique in these waters.

The average yacht—no matter how con genial the company may have been at the port of departure—almost invariably brings through the pass at Tahiti a pack of snarling wild cats who are ready to claw at each other’s throats. A long voyage in the confined space and ines capable association corrodes the thin veneer of civilisation and eventually ex poses the raw, palaeozoic stratum of the original Adam —especially if the yacht is munitioned with an opulent rum pantry as is frequently the case.

Usually no sooner is the anchor cast overboard at Papeete than the party scatters to lodging houses as far apart as the size of the island will permit, until the sailing of the next mail steamers.

Sometimes, instead of voyaging by the same ship, various members of the once happy yachting party will choose a roundabout route via New Zealand to Vancouver rather than be afflicted with the company of their yachtmates on the direct steamer to San Francisco.

The most amusing collection of spit fires was a party of scientists who came out from England on board an old mus eum piece—half sail, half steamer — named the Bt. George.

They came by way of Panama and the Galapagos Islands. We never heard w r hat happened between England and Galapagos. But when the Bt. George arrived at our “Pearl of the Pacific,” the learned savants had passed the stage of hurling diatribes and cathode rays at each other’s heads and were on the threshold of mayhem and eye gorging.

When the ship reached Papeete the party blew apart as though a five gallon can of nitro-glycerine had exploded in its midst.

Those who had the means to do so fled to the four quarters of the compass on the first available mail steamers. The remnant, tied by lean purses to the ship, continued on an erratic voyage to Rapa, where the vessel struck a reef and nearly foundered. Going on across the Pacific to the eastward, at long last they reached Panama, where the expedition gave up the ghost, on account of lack of funds.

If anything ever came of this expedi tion to increase the sum of human know ledge, the world has been unaware of it until this day.

Unfortunately for the harassed yacht owner, these fulminations are not con fined to the beau monde of the cabine de luxe. The forcastle quakes and rumbles with similar dark passions during the voyage, and flies asunder when port is reached. As a result the vessel may be delayed for weeks until a new crew can

be gathered together. This has given opportunity to many a young Tahitian to see the world, and accounts also for the large number of cosmopolitans who haunt our Papeete waterfront.