Airmail Stamps.

First On Central Pacific Route.

From Our Own Correspondent.

Honolulu, Jan. 5.

THOSE collectors who intend putting a price .on the covers of the un official mail carried from Auckland to Hawaii by the survey plane, “Samoa Clipper”, had better know about the first letters carried on the Hawaii-New Zealand air route.

These were carried by the “Samoa Clipper” from Honolulu to Kingman’s * Reef on March 23, 1937, the date of the first survey flight. There were some 30 letters addressed to employees on the

S.S. “North Wind”, the chartered steamer which acted as radio base at the reef.

The mail had been sent by regular sources to the men at Honolulu, but the air company obligingly sent on the mail by the clipper. The alert recipients quickly took advantage of their historic mail.

With razor blades and rubber, they made a neat cancellation stamp which stated “Received at Kingman’s Reef, the date, carried by clipper, etc.”, and Captain A. J. Borklund, the “North Wind’s” skipper, and Stewart Saunders, chief Pan American representative at the reef, obligingly certified the correct facts on each envelope, the location of the reef, date and so on.

So far, only two of these valuable

covers have been sold, and they each fetched 35 dollars. They are all held in the United States.

Incidentally, the mail that was car ried from Auckland to Hawaii by the second survey flight of the “Samoa Clipper” was unofficial, and of this the U.S. post office department was 2are ful to warn collectors in America, It was such a windfall for the men

that they intended sending back the mail to Honolulu by the clipper, but the company, which considers it is entitled to all profits on first mails on its new routes, was angered by the Kingman colonists’ enterprise, and out went an order in code by radio to all the bases on the route that no mail whatsoever could be carried on the northward flight.