A Wander In The Central

Pacific

By R. W. Robson, Editor of the "Pacific Islands Monthly"

IN October, voyaging north from Suva, I made my first —and, I hope, my last—visit to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.

If any father has a son whom be wants to cure of “a longing to linger amid the tropical romance and flashing beauty of the far-famed Pacific Islands’’, he should send him forthwith to this God-forsaken British colony. After he has been blistered by a merciless equatorial sun, has found his fresh food limited to fish and coco nuts, has fought the übiquitous mosquitoes and the prickly-heat that attends cease less perspiration, and has realised that the highest land within thousands of square miles is less than ten feet above sea-level—well, if after that he isn’t yelling for transport somewhere south of Capricorn, he must be dumb indeed.

It was pleasant enough to pass quickly through this chain of equatorial coconut clusters, to receive the charming hos pitality of the few Europeans, to meet the courteous and interesting Euronesians and the always-smiling islanders but that was only because I knew I would soon be leaving. I found the discomforts of life there literally appalling.

In another article (“Life in the Lousy Islands”), I have asked why Britain re tains such a useless, unattractive Terri tory as the Gilbert and Ellice Islands; and why, having retained them, she asks

her young Colonial Office men to undergo such hardships there—so I shall not labour the point here.

ALTHOUGH I spent some of the most miserable days of my life aboard the “John Williams’’, auxiliary schooner of the LMS. I learned to love the ship.

She wallows and she rolls, and she produces, very often, a most unholy com bination of stinks; yet she is a very gentle old lady. She can make one very seasick, and can stew one alive in her deep-set cabins, but she does it all so apologetically, and with no pretence of violence.

The food supplied aboard (almost miraculously, out of a galley where a cooking-range dances everlastingly at an

angle of 45 degrees) is so good as to be incredible a Christian-like way of en couraging people not to be seasick, which I commend to shipowners generally Her four white officers are like the ship kindly, pleasant gentlemen, who do their utmost, under difficult conditions, to make their passengers happy.

Captain Kettle has spent so many years in this most dangerous navigation —probably among the world’s worst— that he guides his ship almost as much by instinct as by instruments. Squalls, unexpected and uncharted currents, clouds which hide the sun for days on end are his common lot.

ONE night, in thick weather, heading for an Ellice island, we were due to pass another island 15 miles off, by dead reckoning.

I saw the Captain fidgeting. Presently, without a word, he went out and turned the ship right around, and steamed back.

Next morning was clear, and anyone could see that, if that ship had continued on her course the previous night, she might have climbed on top of the island she was trying to avoid. The dear old

Top; “John Williams” under sail. Lower; Captain Kettle, Mr. Raddeck (second mate, concealed by beard), and Mr, Page (first mate), “shooting” the sun.

thing, bucking a head sea and a mys terious set. had been doing about li knots forward —and 1 knot sideways!

NOT long ago, when there was profit in buying native sun-dried copra in the outer islands, this was the sub stantial house of the Burns, Philp man ager in Funafuti, Ellice Group. To-day, it is empty, open, derelict —the home ot friendly birds and scampering rats.

There is no store on Funafuti now—all the European traders have gone, and the natives obtain their supplies through a native co-operative society. The natives

will gladly make copra, in order to buy cereals, canned meat, kerosene, etc., but the co-ops.—which have taken the place of the defeated traders on most of these islands —have great difficulty in selling the commodity, even at 20/- or 30/- per ton.

Copra will be good again, when the war-clouds pass; but, when I see these derelict stores and houses—BP represented on every Gilbert arid Ellice island in 1939, now maintain an establishment only at Tarawa—l wonder what the future trading organisation will be. Will these native co-operative societies take the place of the small branch stores and the individual Islands trader?

COLLINS started it.. Gazing dreamily aloft, at the “John Williams” mainmast, he asked: “What’s that on the LMS flag? Doves?’' “Look more like eagles,” said Mr.

Garvey, squinting up, sleepily.

“Immaterial, so long as they’re birds of pray” said I, thus pulling off my best quip of the voyage.

Actually, I believe, the three birds on the flag of the great mission organisation represent Faith, Hope, and Charity, winging out over the Pacific. rE establishment of the gold-mining industry in Fiji is the happiest thing in the economic history of that for tunate Colony—it came just in time to take the place of the copra industry, partly and temporarily collapsed as a result of the war.

There are indications, furthermore, that the industry will not be confined to the two known fields. Prospectors are still out, searching optimistically; and, when I was in Suva in September, I heard that Pat. Costello (who, with William Borthwick, located Tavua), was “on” to something good in the hills behind Lautoka.

That same week, a well-known Suva man showed me a sample of mercury, in a bottle, which had been taken from a lode in Viti Levu and concerning which some hopes are entertained.

HARDSHIP, amounting in places to real suffering, has been placed by war conditions upon the French Roman Catholic Missions, serving in the South Pacific. These nuns, priests and brothers are the teachers of the natives in some of the poorest of the islands; and, hitherto, they have depended partly for their sustenance on remittances from France.

Since June, 1940, those remittances have

ceased, and the position of some of the missions is desperate.

Most RC missionaries, everywhere, are successful gardeners; and they grow much T °^ n , fooc *- Bu t> * n places like the Gilbert Islands—where the coralline flats lacking humus, produce little beyond coconuts and pandanus—they are more dependant on outside sources. Our sympathy goes out, especially to the French women of these missions” said a high official of the G. and E Colony, recently. “We have heard that they are trying to live on native foods, have had neither milk nor butter for a long time.

“We in this Colony value the work of these missions, because of their good work as educationists. At first, and for a long time, they seemed to be more catechists than teachers, but, now, they give really valuable service in the field of general education.”

THIS is Rev. J. Pujebet. Sacred Heart missionary on Ocean Island, who. after years of hard work, has suc ceeded in building a fine, new church on Ocean Island. I attended the opening, and the dedication service, on Ocean Island, on Sunday, October 26 I was more interested in the priest, than in the ceremony, however. Here is one of the best types of French Roman Catholic missionaries, who are doing so

much for the Pacific Islands natives—not necessarily because of the religion they teach, as because of their fine character and the generous service of their lives.

Everyone on Ocean Island, irrespective of creed or class, loves the jolly, kindly, sympathetic Father Pujebet—only they don’t call him Pujebet. To one and all he is “Father Pushbike”—under that per pendicular sun, over those hilly roads he

pedals energetically, on a bicycle, in pur suit of his duty.

“How did you manage it?” I asked him, staring up at the big, well-built, hand some structure.

“Oh, leetle by leetle—the cost, ’e was noding” said the missionary. And he described how they got cement, bag by bag; and, every week, they would make a few more cement blocks, and dress a few more planks and build just a “leetle” more. So that, week by week, year by year, the structure grew—the Banabans, under the leadership of their priest, also growing in eagerness and excitement, giving freely of their labour. Until, voila! There was the church!

Hats off to Father Pujebet, typical South Seas missionary and Church builder, IN Funafuti (Ellice Islands), I visited what is, among scientists, one of the most interesting spots in the world —the place where Professor Sir Edgeworth David, in 1897, proved the truth of Charles Darwin’s theory regarding the ori pin of coral atolls.

These atolls are all similar in shape

Top: The new church on Ocean Island.

Lower: Father Pujebet.

and character—a ring of coral, sur rounding a comparatively shallow lagoon, dropping sheer to great depths on the seaward side, and a series of narrow islets being perched on the circular reef.

Having learned that the coral insect cannot live below a certain depth—com paratively shallow Darwin formulated the theory that th? atolls were formed by slow submergence. The insects, aeons ago, began to build in shallow water; the ground slowly sank, and the insects kept on building up so as to remain within the depth of water in which they can live. So this deep Pacific became dotted over with what are virtually coral stalks.

That was the theory. David proved it by taking a drilling plant to Funafuti, a typical atoll. There, he put a bore down 1,100 feet—and the drill was still in coral.

Obviously, the coral must have sunk—the insects could not have worked at that depth. . , There is nothing now to mark the site of the bore except some coal-dust, and a bit of rusty iron, showing just above the earth’s surface. Some institution should put* a stone tablet on the spot in another 50 years it will be lost and forgotten.

CLANG— bang—clatter—b-r-r-r-!

A little old, red Austin car began to chug its way across the island of Tarawa— and pandemonium broke loose.

Dogs howled, and bolted for the pandanus thickets. Children screamed in terror, and sought sanctuary at mother’s skirts—in

vain, for mother mostly was legging it for her sheltered hut, where, she hoped, the noisy red devil would not penetrate.

Thus, a few months ago, civilisation’s modern transport first reached the capital of the Gilbert Islands. The Colony’s director of health, Dr. Kingsley Steenson, had become tired of pushing a bicycle around the flat little island; so, when he returned from furlough, he brought with him £lO worth of second-hand Austin.

At first, it was regarded with horror by the natives; but, now, it causes no ex citement as it puffs around the palm shaded roads.

But, down in his little office, the local tax-gatherer, Mr. F. T. English, broods bitterly. He knows that, in more sophis ticated countries, treasurers wax rotund and rich from import duties, registration fees, driver’s licenses, petrol taxes, and God-knows-what, extracted gleefully from motor-owners.

In Tarawa, the motor-owner careers blithely across the landscape—he pays not a tax nor a fee. He is not even obliged to put a plate with “Tarawa 1” on the back of his car. There are no speed limits.

He can drive right across the island on the right-hand side of the road. The native policeman makes deep obeisance as he passes.

Dr. Steenson says the car is a godsend; but Mr. English thinks that something should be done about it.

FROM the spathe of a growing coconut, right up in the head of the palm,

the natives obtain a juice which, permitted to ferment (which it does, easily and readily), becomes the famous coconut toddy.

In the atoll islands, it is greatly esteemed, for its nutrition value. But, like beer, if it is taken in excess, it will make one intoxicated though its alcoholic content is less than that of beer.

Because of this, some missions— especially the LMS—have set their faces

against toddy-drinking. In the Gilbert and Ellice Colony, an ignorant and well meaning Government actually made toddy unlawful.

This caused much trouble. The other wise tractable natives, guided by their instinct rather than by white man’s law, would not give up toddy-drinking, Then it was discovered that this coconut beverage contains much of the important vitamin Bl—of which there is

Dr. Steenson in his notorious Austin.

otherwise a deficiency in the equatorial atolls. So the G. and E. Government very wisely restored toddy-making and ™S; dr i nkmg V> th ® list ° f law£ul things. A man of good repute now may make but may not sell toddy; and, if ?nH^ US6 I hIS pnv i lege ’ hl ® as a l°^.^‘ ma^e r may be cancelled.

The LMS fought hard against the new Beru, and I missed the chance of seeing the famous Beru establishment and of meeting Mr. G. H. Eastman and Mr, ®aaa.

Toddy-making is permitted by the Australian Administrator in Nauru for health reasons But here also, drunkenness is sternly discouraged.

ONE of the greatest luxuries and most 5 re£ s, teS r * uxm * es a j ld md ft healthful, foods I have found on the little ships among the equatorial islands is canned pineapple juice, served

out of the freezer It is nut im in tim containing about 1' pints by the Colonial Pineapple Packing Co of Ovalau Fiii and I "understood teat it can on our breakfast tables for 4/- opt dozen (4d. per can) Such enterprise with such a delicious beverage, at such ’a low cost is worth encouraging even if it means making canned juice \ com- PUISOTy rati ° n ° n aU ships.

T7WERYONE in the Ellice and Gilbert £j islands speaks with affection of the Rev . A. L sldd) 1 who Is associated with Rev. G. H. Eastman in directing the LMS operations there 1 g Mr. Sadd is an energetic, quick-thinking impulsive man of whom some delightful stories are told. s a There was the occasion when Mr. Sadd took a boat, a crew, and some explosive out to the reef to blast and enlarge the boat-passage—a difficult and dangerous task. 5

They were there for some time, making careful preparations. Then Mr. Sadd lit the fuse.

"Row, boys, row!” he shouted, and the boys rowed like furies.

But the boat didn’t move. They had forgotten to pull up the anchor!

With one accord, the boys and their absent-minded master dived overboard, and swam madly away. A few seconds later, the boat “went up”—but no one was hurt.

The story is almost too good to be true.

But they told it to me on the “John Williams”, where they think the world of Mr. Sadd.

HERE, probably, is the finest Residency in the South Seas—it cost about £17,000, and it houses the Resident Commissioner at Ocean Island. It was completed in 1938.

The design, for such a purpose and in such a climate—it is right on the equator —is practically perfect. Generous reception rooms on the ground floor; offices behind; a bonny sweep of staircase leading to the bedrooms above, each with its own

balcony, and plenty of bathrooms, shower rooms, etc. Every room catches a breeze, from whatever direction. There is thought and finish in every corner—seen in little things like fans, bedside lights, tea al coves. The structure—simple, impressive, dignified, buried in tropical foliage stands high on Ocean Island’s hill, looking out to the northeast.

It is the design of Mr. Hedges, a New Zealand architect, who was also singu larly successful in designing that fine, imposing white block which now houses the Fiji Government Offices in Suva.

IT is interesting to recall other South Pacific Residencies.

Government House at Namanula, Rabaul, is spacious, impressive in design, and beautifully situated; it is sad to think that it must remain there, on the lip of the muttering volcano, while the Adminis trator goes with the Administration to the new capital.

Government House at Port Moresby has a charming situation, on a hill, some two miles out; but it is an old, rambling struc ture, typical of the pioneer style of 50 years ago.

The Residency at Tulagi is small, but pleasantly situated on a hill. That at Vila is bigger and better—also pleasantly situated, on a little island in the harbour.

Government House, Suva, is spacious, impressive, rambling, old-fashioned, and gloriously situated among tropical gardens, on a hill overlooking the sea.

The Residency at Apia, Samoa, is notable at once for its situation and its history. Apia is hot and humid; but “Vailima”, four miles out, and 500 feet up in the foothills of the central ranges, enjoys always a cool breeze. “Vailima” was built in 1890, as his Samoan home, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and later was added to. It is rambling and old-fashioned, but very picturesque.

THIS American practice of cutting short the long names of well-known in stitutions grows upon journalists, who

are fighting, under wartime conditions, for every inch of space.

But I shall have to watch my step.

I have found a horrid example in the Central Pacific.

When the High Commission for the Western Pacific launched the plan of re populating the Phoenix Group, the plan was officially and quite naturally desig nated the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme.

No one saw the trap until a hurried official in Suva, sending a letter to the Officer Commanding, Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, used initials only.

The result seemed greatly to cheer the young men who have been bucketing about for two years between the Gilberts and the Phoenix, trying to make the settlement plan go. 1 DON’T know whether this should be called “Tarawa’s Wailing Wall” or “Bevington’s Labour of Sisyphus”— it has the characteristics of both.

Big ships come into Tarawa Lagoon, but

they must lie far out from the islet where commerce is cen tred. So past generations of Administrative officers built a long boat-jetty, out over shal lows that are bare at low tide, to allow the easier working of ships. The outer part of this jetty was cemented together; the two-thirds nearest shore comprised simply blocks of coral, roughly fitted together.

EVERY year, £3O was allot ted for this jetty’s main

tenance, and should have been spent on cement; but, every year, officials with an economy complex returned the £3O to the Treasury, with whoops of triumph. Every year, the westerly gales smashed the non-cemented jetty to pieces; every year, sweating thieves and adulterers from the local gaol built it up again.

The present AO, conscientious young Bevington, found it fiat; and, week by week, with infinite toil, his police and prisoners built it up once more.

The day I landed, it was stone-perfect.

Next morning, it was being lashed by a westerly, and I stood there and watched it literally disintegrate, like sugar, and took this photograph. When I left, only the cemented end was standing. £5O worth of cement would have saved endless work, worry and inconvenience.

ON two occasions in his short official career, Mr. E. R. Bevington, now Administrative Officer at Tarawa

(Gilbert Islands) has been aided in a remarkable way, by the great current which, during part of the year, sweeps south-eastward from New Guinea and the regions northward thereof.

Late in 1940, Mr. Bevington was landed on the large island of Tabiteuea (Central Gilberts) to deal with native affairs. The Government vessel was to come back for him within a few days.

But a series of terrific westerly gales set in, and several weeks passed before a ship could get near Tabiteuea. Mr.

Bevington’s supplies soon ran out, except tea and canned milk, and he did the best he could with native foods.

He had used his last sugar and milk, in mid-December, 1940, when a couple of ship’s lifeboats, and a great quantity of miscellaneous wreckage, came ashore on Tabiteuea. In one boat there was a large quantity of canned milk, and other sup plies, which kept the marooned official going until he was rescued.

The wreckage came from the five ships

which the German ' raiders sank off Nauru. It arrived on Tabiteuea five days after the shelling—which means that it had drifted, before the north-westerly gale, about 100 miles per day.

ON the other occasion, Mr. Bevington was AO at Beru (Southern Gilberts).

He finally had persuaded the natives to build a substantial bridge between two of the islets of the atoll, but they could not complete it owing to lack of timber.

And then, driven before a westerly gale, no less than 100 large, well-cut logs came providentially ashore on Bern’s western coast. Mr. Bevington thinks they came from New Guinea, and his description suggests they were “New Guinea walnut” —a big boom of lumber must have broken adrift in New Britain.

Mr Bevington did not question this act of God. He secured the co-operation of the LMS Mission; and the Mission’s sawmill turned the great logs into planks;

and the bridge was completed, in sub stantial fashion.

We wonder who, in New Guinea or thereabouts, lost that timber.

IN Suva, in the highest circles of the Western Pacific High Commission, they read with interest the report that triplets had been born on Pitcairn Island, to a direct descendant of a ‘‘Bounty” mutineer. Pitcairn is in the W.P. territory.

Mr. Vaskess wondered if the parents could apply for the King’s Bounty, given to British-born triplets everywhere H. E. was sympathetic.

R. H. Garvey grinned. ‘“Bounty”’ said he. “‘Bounty’! Isn’t that getting a bit close to the bone?”

They laughed, and suppressed him; and I think that, if the death of one of the triplets is not considered a disqualification, the bounty may be sought.

IT was in Suva, late, and bright moon light.

A young naval engineer of my acquaintance, at the end of a festive evening, was walking, unsteadily, near Albert Park.

Suddenly, he stopped dead, and stared, in horror, at an object in the roadway.

It appeared to be a large paper bag; and, although there was not a breath of wind, it was rolling and hopping along.

The engineer hurried away. Then he stopped again, and looked shyiy back. The paper bag still was hopping—and he could hear it crackling and rattling, as it encountered grass.

My young friend sat upon a bench, and held his head, and moaned slightly, and swore off liquor for life. He kept his pledge, too —until he heard about the giant toad.

The giant toad was brought from Hawaii to Viti Levu to clean up slugs and insects which were proving very destruc tive in the sugar plantations; and it has done its job so well that it has wiped

out most of Fiji’s garden pests—and has, itself, taken their place.

There now must be millions of toads there. They hop happily about the gar dens. Ditches and water-courses are alive with them. Even money there is a toad m every hole on the golf course.

TTiey are harmless, friendly fellows, and Fiji does not object to them. Young Fiji practises two stock jokes upon them They are tied into paper bags, and left to hop blindly about the landscape, to the consternation of harmless alcoholics or a lighted cigarette is placed in their mouths. The toad’s hooked teeth hold the cigarette in place, and he puffs out smoke in realistic fashion. The sight of a toad calmly smoking a cigarette, is only slightly less startling than that of the peripatetic bag.

In an endeavour to reduce insect pests —especially mosquitoes—in the northern islands, the toads have been taken from Fiji to Funafuti (Ellice) and Tarawa and Abemama (Gilberts); but there they do not seem to be flourishing. The atoll is lands probably are too dry. 1 ADMIRED the trim lines of “RCS Nimanoa”; and then asked, “What does the RCS stand for—Resident Commissioner’s ship?’’ “No” I was told "Royal Colonial Ship”. But many of the natives hereabouts still believe it means “Roman Catholic Ship”.

Actually, the Roman Catholic ship in the Gilberts is the “Theresa”, a very shapely little schooner, with a strong auxiliary, built in Tarawa by Mr. William Reiher, a clever man of German-Marshall parentage. There are three brothers, Reiher, in the Gilberts—William, Fritz, and Henry—all exceedingly able crafts men. They were driven out of the Mar shalls, in fairly recent years, by the Japanese.

FOR long years, Mr. G. M. Murdoch, an educated and cultivated Englishman, was an administrative officer in the service of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. He was stationed mostly at Tarawa. He married a Gilbertese girl, and had several children.

Through his wife, he acquired sub stantial land interests in Kuria; and, when he retired from the service, he settled on Kuria, as a trader and planter.

He lived strictlv according to European standards, and insisted that his children be properly educated.

Of one daughter, Agnes, he was es pecially fond she was good-looking, vivacious and intelligent. So he sent her to San Francisco, to be educated.

When she returned, she was a slim and attractive young girl, with plenty of poise, and a full-bodied American accent.

She should have married a European, but young European men were not plentiful in the equatorial islands in those Great War days. She married, instead, a son of the king of Abemama.

Readers of Islands romances will find plenty about Abemama and its “royal family” in Stevenson’s book. The Abem ama kings were ferocious warriors, and. when Britain took over the group, they held all Abemama, and the neighbouring

islands of Kuria and Aranuka, in subjection.

Agnes Murdoch now is an elderly woman. Briefly, while a boat waited to take me back to the ship through a menacing surf, I interviewed her at her home in Abemama, not one hundred yards from the spot where Stevenson lived, during his sojourn there. She still is slim, and straight and distinctive, with a charming voice and an American ac cent; and, in spite of her isolation, she can talk interestingly of people and affairs.

She has two handsome sons —and, in this picture, she is seen between the two of them. When the old king died, Agnes Murdoch’s brother-in-law became king; and now he is dead, and Agnes Murdoch’s elder son (seen in the photograph) has taken his place, as paramount chief.

These boys have been educated. The elder has married the daughter of Captain “Jimmie” Smith, a well-known Abemama resident, who married a Gilbertese woman.

BUT all is not well with Abemama’s royal family. In the over-populated Gilbert Islands, land is man’s most precious possession, and the allocation of land titles is a most complex and delicate business. The British Administration generally allots titles on the status quo, fixed when it took control. On that basis, most of the land in Abemama, Kuria and Aranuka belongs primarily to the Abem ama royal family.

But the land-hungry peoples of Kuria and Aranuka see no reason why they should continue to pay tribute in the shape of rent to the kingly house in Abemama; and, when I was along there in October, they were holding many meet ings, and talking revolt, and generally seething. Agnes Murdoch, on behalf of her son, expressed great anxiety in rela tion to the position.

It looked to me like a No. 1 headache for the Administration. The fact is that the G. and E. Colony Lands Commission, to which has been given the responsibility of hearing thousands of land claims, and clarifying countless titles, has done little for some years, and the work is far behind schedule, and is becoming every year more involved.

Practice and principle in Polynesia (Nauru is a good example) both indicate that the simplest and quickest way of cleaning up an accumulation of land claims is to put the whole job into the

hands of the local councils of native chiefs. They cut out much of our weari some procedure, but they go straight to the point, and decide it in accordance with local knowledge and tradition. There is no corruption or back-door greasing of hands, and sound justice is done.

WHEN I left Funafuti (Ellice Islands) I carried with me a piece of white, clean, aromatic soap, made out of local coconut oil, with a couple of chemi cals added, by the Administrative Officer there, Mr. D. C. I. Wernham.

Captain Kettle, of the “John Williams”, noticed it. “I have wondered, often, why people in the Islands don’t make their own soap” he said. “We carry tons and tons of city-manufactured soap into the Islands, and yet the people could make all they want, if ‘they were inclined, at a low cost.”

IF you drive around the pleasant island of Nauru (11 miles) you will see many pigs feeding languidly in the coconut groves. Most are black, rangy brutes —real “Captain Cookers”—but a proportion are square and rotund in shape, and red in colour.

I expressed interest, and the Adminis trator (Lieut.-Colonel Chalmers) explained the position.

“When I came here, three years ago, I did not know much about tropical con

ditions, but I do know farming” he said.

“Those native pigs were an offence to the eye, and to every stocklover.

“So I sent down to the Hawkesbury Agricultural College, and got a number of pedigree boars, Tamworth Reds. I gave instructions that every native boar on the island should be castrated. The change, in a couple of years, has been remarkable and the natives are de lighted. They now are getting pigs that are much increased in weight.”

In Nauru, pigs indeed are wealth. There are hundreds of Chinese employed in the phosphate works, and the Chinese

pay liberally for fresh food. The Nauruans S«^£? od mone y hy producing food for the Chinese—pigs, fowls, bananas, pine apples, taro, etc. The Chinese will pay An C H°r a f f l plg nearly twice its Australian value.

AS we steamed through the lovely strait between Taveuni and Vanua Levu a ? d u 1 Jt dr ™ red the 30-miles-long row of beautiful (and what were once highly profitable) coconut plantations, David Collins told me a story about i aveuni.

It appears that this big, mountainous

island is placed exactly astride the 180th degiee of longitude. In the bad old days, before they provided for Fiji’s convenience by giving the date-line a twist to the ea stward, and when the old day ended and the new day began on the 180th certain planters of Taveuni, with hooked noses and no industrial morals, worked a labour racket.

Clearly, when it was Saturday on the eastern end of Taveuni, it was Sunday on the western end—the day’s nomenclature changed at the island’s midway point So the gentle racketeers eliminated Sun day from their labour gang’s week. , Ti \ e J would, for example, work the oewildered labourers at the western end of the island until Saturday evening* then they would move them to the eastern end, where it still was Friday evening; on Saturday evening (eastern end) they would move them back to the western end, where it was now officially Sunday evening; and there they were, all ready for a start on Monday morning—in accordance with white man’s magic You can believe it or not—but Collins said it was true.

BERU is the G. and E. headquarters of the LMS—a beautiful and attractive place, ashore, but heartily cursed by all sailors. There is no sheltered anchor age- Jf the weather is fine, they anchor off the boat passage; and their passengers arid cargo are ferried, for miles, through the lagoon. If the weather is rough ships do the best they can in the lee of the island.

When we arrived, a howling westerly made the anchorage untenable; and, in Bern’s lee, in bounding seas and heavy rain, we transferred to another ship, and crawled away northwards, in the teeth of the storm. I was disappointed in not seeing Mr. Eastman and Mr. Sadd, of whose work at Beru I had heard so muci.

When I am king, I shall decree a much more suitable place than Beru as LMS headquarters. In this Group, the LMS is wholly dependant upon sea transport; yet Beru, in the language of one disgusted mate, “isn’t a port’s bootlace”.

The gentle old “John Williams” has to supply all the Ellice and some of the Gilberts with stores, etc., using Beru as a centre, and returning to Beru again and again. Surely a dog’s life, in westerly weather, for ship and men.