Tropicalities

NOT the least of the amenities of which one is deprived, when one travels among the distant equatorial islands, is the barber’s shop. One’s hair will grow; so one just begs service where one can. In these pictures, one sees

the varying technique aboard the vari ous ships on which the editor of the ‘“PIM” recently travelled.

The top one shows His Honour the Acting Resident Commissioner of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (Mr. R. H.

Garvey), preparing for a landing. The radio operator is operating: and Mr.

Garvey’s grip on the grating is induced by the fact that, if he didn’t grip, the rolling and pitching of the ship would have put him in the scuppers.

The lower picture illustrates a tech nique less dignified, but better calculated to meet stormy conditions. Here, the chief engineer clings to a locker with his stomach, while an engine-room artificer strives to give propriety and symmetry to his officer’s raven locks. —R. W. R. « TWO or three times, in past years, I have been solemnly assured by “old hands’’ in the Central Pacific that one may contract a venereal disease by

drinking “coconut toddy’’ (juice of the coconut flower-bud, allowed to ferment).

The thing seemed absurd, on the face of it, but the old lads were quite serious.

In the Northern Gilberts —where there is much toddy-drinking—l got what appears to be the explanation. A party of Euronesians, with whom I was spend ing a pleasant evening, directed my attention to a swarm of ugly insects, around the hanging lamp, and warned me solemnly against them. They said the insects were “toddy bugs’’—they came into view wherever toddy was being

produced—and if they were allowed to remain on one’s bare skin, they dis charged an irritant poison which caused a most unpleasant blister. They were

liable to fall into one’s beer; and if one inadvertently drank any liquid in which a toddy-bug had drowned, one’s urine and organs were usually affected in such a way .that one, for some days, dis played all the symptoms of gonorrhoea.

I sat back, and fiercely guarded my beer against toddy-bugs; and recalled, with chuckles, a story told to me plain tively in Samoa by the late John Andrew, old-time trader, concerning an ailment which had befallen him mys

teriously in the Line Islands, after he had been toddy-drinking.

The pestilential character of the toddy-bug was afterwards confirmed to me by other Gilbertese sufferers.—R.W.R. • MEN from the peripatetic services, who decide to break the monotony of tropical existence with a little unconventional revelry, are occasionally seen in Port Moresby. Recently, a visit ing seaman caused a sensation in a hotel lounge by stalking past the tables, minus his trousers, and challenging all who dared “to take him on”.

When the invitation was ignored, and it was urged that the gentleman clothe himself more suitablv in the presence of ladies, he became violent, and attacked his companion. A general scuffle fol lowed, on the floor, when another of his mates, thinking that perhaps things had gone a little too far. settled the affair with a well-aimed kick in the eve. This ended the fight, but not the disturbance.

Order was restored when two policemen came and persuaded the wounded hero to go with them to the nolice station, where he received first-aid, and accom modation for the night. * ' T'HIS is not a “proper” story, and the 1 Central Pacific official who included it in a private letter to the editor did not intend it for vublication. But it is really so funny that it must go into print:— ONE night we were all at Willie’s, and he told ns about some of the girls he had known. Mrs. Willie (Tiara) teased him about the time when thev were first married and she went travel ling with him.

He was a supercargo on a schooner.

She said that whenever thev arrived at an island he would take her on one

side and point out the particular girl he’d had on that island in his single days, so that if there should be any loose talk, and the matter should hap pen to come up, his wife could always retort: “Yes, that might be quite true, but he didn’t marry you, did he? He married me.”

Willie, by this time, had become a little tight and was telling us about some girls that Tiara had not heard about, and she took it up.

“Hey. Willie, you didn’t tell me about this before.”

“Eh? Oh. no, maybe not. But I haven’t told you everything. I was sail ing about these places before you were born. Why, I knew your mother when she was a young girl.”

Without stopping to think. Tiara shot ba'-'k. “Go on, now! Maybe you’re my father!”

Willie was so astonished that he stop ped drinking, and looked at her over the rim of his glass, and then he exploded: “Don’t be so damn silly! Woman, you’re crazy!”

He spent the rest of that evening mumbling to himself; and, everv now and then, he would mutter into his empty glass: “Damn woman’s crazy!”

Mr. Norman Wood, of Thurley’s Pty.

Ltd., importers and Islands merchants of Melbourne, returned to Australia last month after a visit to Western Samoa in connection with the cocoa trade.

Mrs. Margaret Simpson, the oldest resident of Thursday Island, died in Oc tober at the age of 92. She went to TT when the settlement at Somerset (Cape York Peninsula. Northern Queensland) was abandoned in 1877. Her husband was Superintendent of Prisons on Thursday Island and died there in 1899.