Rls Cottage In Tahiti
p. 10 · Read in the full issue
A WELL-KNOWN resident of New Guinea, Mr. B. H. Edgell, now tem porarily a resident of Tasmania, wrote recently to the “PIM":— “When I was in Tahiti in 1936 I visited the village of Tantira and was sorry to see that the cottage in which Robert Louis Stevenson lived and wrote was fall ing into disrepair. I have often thought I should like to move in the matter of having it renovated; but I hardly know how to go about it, especially in a French Colony ... If you care to open a fund and arrange for the work to be done and supervised, I shall be happy to forward a contribution of £3/3/-.”
No Building Material
We referred the matter to two Tahiti gentlemen interested in history—Messrs.
A. C. Rowland and W. W. Bolton. Mr.
Rowland’s reply is interesting:— “We are agreed that, much as we should wish to carry out Mr. Edgell's proposal, building and repairing of houses are undertakings which will have to await the end of the war. Not a stick of lumber, or an iron nail, is available in the whole archipelago. People who are in urgent need of building material are buying up old houses, at very high prices.”