Bad "Blow" In Cooks
p. 47 · Read in the full issue
From Our Own Correspondent
Rarotonga, April 17.
A HEAVY gale was experienced at Rarotonga on March 6. Consider able damage was done to the almost mature orange crop, Arorangi district being most severely affected. This was the hardest “blow” since the hurricane of February, 1935, and, although not comparable with that disaster, was suffi cient to turn a green flowering fore shore into a mass of brown vegetation and fallen leaves.
Results of the storm in the low atolls of the Northern Cook Group were worse.
Inhabitants of these islands feared for their lives, with a dangerous wind and a raging sea. Large numbers of coconut trees succumbed; and at Suwarrow all boats and canoes were a complete loss.
After such events as this the ominous word “onge” (famine) comes to men’s lips. All the coconuts and breadfruit fall to the ground, taro and puraka are spoilt by the salt spray, and the fishing completely disorganised. Life in the South Seas is not always beer and skittles.