”Nothing To See"
p. 48 · Read in the full issue
Concerning Unimaginative World- Wandering Yachtsmen
From Our Own Correspondent
Papeete, Aug. 16.
VI /E often wonder why the majority of travellers leave home. Apparently, they see nothing of the places they visit.
Once, when we stood at the brink of that august chasm of blazing splendour, the Grand Canyon of Colorado, we heard a bored nasal voice nearby exclaim, “Ain’t Nature wonderful;” and in the next breath start an endless and ani mated recital about the price of gasoline at Albuquerque, the merits of sundry hot-dog stands encountered en route, and a Greta Garbo cinema picture seen in Kansas City.
So. too, at Tahiti. The average visitor functions as a motor for a rocking chair on a hotel verandah, interested only in the petty gossip of the town and totally oblivious to the flaming glory of the flamboyant tree overhead, the incandes cent green of the mountain peaks under the brilliant sunlight, or the flashing emerald, ruby, and sapphire of the coral sea.
Yachtsmen after spending most of their time at Papeete chaffering over the price of a few deceased pigs and cases of Scotch whisky—usually go to Raiatea, an island above all others, abounding in pre-historic monuments, fascinating bays, and quaint native villages.
Moored at the wharf at Uturoa, blind to the beauties all about them, they pass two or three days bitterly complaining that “there is nothing to see in these bloody islands.” Then they sail away to Samoa.
Perhaps, if we could stage a parade of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Mystic Shrine, on the Papeete waterfront, with the Grand Potentate riding a camel and the chanters in red fezes singing.
“Hail, Hail, the Gang’s all here”: or provide a few “honky tonks” with a night club show in “the altogether,” and a few other comforts of home —then these so journers would proclaim our island a “whale of a place” and feel amply repaid for their long voyage.
Mr. A. P. Matthews, manager of the Bank of New Zealand in Suva, Fiji, left the Colony during September on trans fer to Ashburton, N.Z. He will be suc ceeded in Fiji by Mr. O. M. Samuel, of Paeroa, New Zealand.
Monsieur P. Imbault, President of the Tribunal of First Instances in New Cale donia, arrived in Sydney from Noumea with his daughter by the Pierre Loti in August. They later sailed for France.
Lieutenant-Colonel Laurence Reding ton, of the Quartermaster Corps of the United States Army, arrived in Sydney by the Mirrabooka recently. He is on furlough and sailed by the Macdhui on August 28 to visit the Bulolo goldfield in New Guinea,