Paradise

Hidden Snake In

Elephantiasis In Oceania

From Our Own Correspondent

Tahiti, Dec. 10.

lITO’OREA, near Tahiti, is reputed to ITI be one of the most beautiful islands of the South Pacific.

It is, indeed, picturesque; resembling the craggy Marquesas rather than its sister islands of the Society Archipelago As does many another enchanted isle Mo’orea hides within the splendour of its luxuriant verdure, a yellow-eyed monster —elephantiasis.

Refugees of the “Getting Away From It All” Period, who disdained the warn ings of the well-informed and followed the ignis fatuus of crack-pot writers, settled in goodly numbers on Mo’orea A friend of mine, returned from a recent visit to that island, has described to me the spectacle of mouldering houses and jungle-choked gardens, abandoned by their owners, who have gone to seek, in some frigid climate, relief from the recurring chills, fevers and swollen, painful lymphatics of elephantiasis. His tory relates that everv European on Mo’orea has, sooner or later, been over taken by the disease.

The island. Huahine, and many dis tricts of Tahiti, share with Mo’orea an evil reputation as infected areas, where Euroneans may settle only at. the peril of contracting this disease. They invari ably do; if they remain there a few months.

Residence in Alaska or on the shores of the Great Slave Lake in Canada— where the temperature hovers around 40 degrees below zero—appears to be the only cure for elephantiasis.

Mr. A. J. Gaskin, who went to Papua for the American Red Cross last year, is now back at his old job in Eternal Territories Department. Sydney. He was forced to resign from the Red Cross for health reasons. Before the war he was the popular proprietor of the Cosmo politan Hotel, Rabaul. He was recently re-elected president of the New Guinea Branch of the RSSAILA, which at present functions in Sydney.