Climbing in Tahiti

What a Pair of Good Legs Did For a Young Consul

ANYONE who has lived, during a num ber of decades, on the island of Tahiti, has had occasion to behold the great ones of the earth, from five continents and the archipelagoes of seven seas, in wider variety than per haps is given to dwellers of any other community outside of the great metro politan centres.

Princes and dukes, marquesses and counts, baronets and knights, field marshals and admirals, as well as em perors of finance, maharajas of 5 and 10 cent principalities, zinc barons and whisky mandarins from the Great Re public of the North, have passed in more or less glittering pageant before the eyes of the inhabitants of this remote isle

The impressions they have made, and the memories they have left behind them, have been proportionate with their several personalities.

Titles and honours, of admittedly human origin, inspire little awe in people whose ancestries trace through dim ages of antiquity to the august gods of ancient Polynesia. On the waterfront at Papeete the appraisal—ignoring rank, ribands and insignia—has always been commen surate with the rotundity of wallets and the pliability of purse-strings.

One of the really eminent visitors —in the period preceding the Great War— was Viscount Bryce, who is remembered not only on account of his scholarship and ambassadorial dignity, but oecause he gave a shining proof of the old saying that “Victories are won on the cricket fields of Eton”, or on equivalent stadia in other lands.

Lord Bryce, notwithstanding his three score years and ten, was still possessed of the springy muscles of his Etonian days. His energy and endurance as a pedestrian and climber of mountains were, apparently, without limits.

The then British Consul —whom years of service in the hottest places on the globe (Zanzibar, Basra and such) until he had lately settled in the comparatively frigid climate of Tahiti —had attuned him to the mild exercise of crossing and re crossing his legs in an ample easy chair, by day, and an easy stroll of half a mile, after sundown —was speedily in a state of consternation.

After one day with Lord Bryce, the British Consul, a pallid shadow of the man he had been 48 hours before, drove up to the Consulate of the United States.

“Look here,” he told his colleague, “you are a young man, fresh out from home.

Perhaps you can keep up with this old whirlwind. I cannot. The old devil pro poses to go out to that old native fort up in the mountains to-morrow. I couldn’t do it out to save my life. Be a good fellow, and go with him, and I shall be obliged to you beyond measure.”

The U.S. Consul was, indeed, a young man; recently graduated from University and at the very beginning of his career.

He agreed to oblige the British Consul.

He and Lord Bryce went to the fort in the mountains the next day; and on many other days thereafter the two climbed hills and explored valleys and went on fishing expeditions, until Lord Bryce departed to his post as H.B.

Majesty’s ambassador at Washington.

On his first visit of ceremony to the U.S. Secretary of State, Lord Bryce re marked : “Do you know, sir, that you have a remarkably fine and able young man as Consul at Tahiti?”

The Secretary of State (whose usual reports about consuls from unofficial sources were caustic, violent and some times profane complaints from disgruntled American tourists) was surprised and pleased.

“This is very happy news, Your Ex cellency,” he told Lord Bryce.

Some time afterward, the young consul was summoned from Tahiti to Washing ton. His next appointment was to one of the juiciest plums of the service, in Europe, and he is still rising in the ser vice.

His British colleague continued to take mild exercise at the Tahiti consulate for many subsequent years, and meditated sourly on the vicissitudes of fortune.

A.C.R.

Ramon M. Sablan, a native of Guam Island, North-West Pacific, has returned home after graduating at an American university as a doctor, with the degrees of B.Sc. and M.D. He is the first Chamorro to gain this distinction. Guam has a native population of over 20,000 and the large island is by no means free of tuberculosis, pneumonia and certain other tropical diseases.