Dolorous Days
p. 21 · Read in the full issue
In Tahiti
THE Brotherhood of the Bottle, at Tahiti, are having a heart breaking time of it, in these dolorous days.
The cellars are empty. The jealously hoarded private stocks of Scotch whisky, cognac, Bourbon Delight, Jersey Light ning ( apple brandy ), gin, liqueurs, schnapps, and matured rum have dwindled to the vanishing point.
The flowing rivers of strong waters that once slaked the burning thirst of des perate refugees from the desert of prohibition, have shrunken to a trickle of brackish, noisome liquid in the beds of sun-blasted wadies.
A bottle-a-day man we know filters this raw essence from the sugar cane, through a compound of charcoal and arrow-root to ameliorate the stench of molasses and Blatta Orientalis—the characteristic aroma of our local product.
Others take aspirin tablets to deaden the olfactory nerve centres before saluting the sun over the yard-arm.
In the dear, dead days of long ago— when the sending of distilled liquors to the outer islands was interdicted—the Tuamotu natives found consolation in Eau de Cologne. But that spring, too, has now dried up.
One does not know whence relief will
come, or when.-
A.C.R.
Sappers R. St. John and L. Boyer, both formerly of Fiji (the latter having been a member of Morris, Hedstrom Ltd.’s Labasa staff) are serving overseas with the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Forces in the Western Desert.