Dollars

CI Resume Normal Economy

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Rarotonga, March 25.

DOLLARS still make the headlines —if only over reports from various island groups that dollar-prosperity is rapidly receding.

This is also true of Rarotonga.

Although there is still a steady export of hula-skirts, shell necklaces and other souvenir articles, it is a mere trickle com pared with the volume of the last two years. It is becoming a little easier to interest the natives in the vital subjects of reviving food plantations and laying the foundations of a more substantial fruit export trade.

Some of the inhabitants of Cl which have supported American troops have had the sense to salt down a large proportion of their accumulated wealth against the inevitable thinner days to come. Some really surprising figures are mentioned.

Some of the natives have substantial deposits in the savings bank while others, with the common native mistrust of allowing the Government to look after their money, have followed the old cus tom of hiding it in secret caches of their own.

Generally speaking, Polynesians are extremely easy-come easy-go with money, but there have been many cases of natives who have nursed a secret hoard, only to die without revealing the hiding place to their chagrined families, who have searched in vain.

A leading Rarotongan has told how his father, a one-time successful ship-owner and trader, kept a hoard of sovereigns in an earthenware jar. In his old age he would sometimes go out into the night

and return with his treasure, to count it on the table, as misers will, while mem bers of the family silently watched through chinks in the wall. Then he would carry it back into the night, sternly forbidding anyone to follow.

He took his secret with him to the grave. Every effort was made to locate the hoard, but it was never found. Some years later, a noted “witch-doctor” from Raiatea, who claimed, among other things, the power of divining hidden treasure, was approached by the family to locate the lost gold. After some pre liminary investigation he said that the spirit of the dead man was still jealously guarding the treasure and would first have to be destroyed. The superstitious Rarotongans were terrified at this sugges tion and begged that the matter be drop ped there and then—which sceptical whites call an easy get-out for the witch doctor.

We have also a few romantic tales of treasures brought ashore for temporary burial by the crews of ships which never returned.

Would-be treasure-hunters are warned, however, that they will do better and finish richer in pocket if they stay home and search for the proverbial needle in a haystack. rpHIS is the second time in their history JL that the Cook Islanders have talked in dollars. In the earlier commer cial era, before annexation by NZ, the currency of the Group was in Chilean dollars. One often comes across these large, handsome coins, kept as souvenirs, sometimes in the form of watch-chain pendants.

This brings us to the story of the man who made a mistake. With the intro duction of NZ currency a batch of brand new, shiny pennies arrived in Rarotonga.

One “wise-guy” Rarotongan said to him self: “What fools these people are! These big coins are solid gold—and if a little

golden guinea is worth 21 silver shillings how much must these big golden dollars be worth! And here are these foolish people throwing them around as if they were worth practically nothing!”

So, with the greatest secrecy, he set about collecting as many of the golden dollars as possible. He then boarded a ship fbr Tahiti, paying his travelling expenses in silver to ghard his secret. In Tahiti he would spend the rest of his days in luxury, free from, cadging rela tives and friends. Alas for his hopes!

Arrived in Tahiti he soon found the true worth of his quickly-gathered fortune.

Robert HarbuJot was one of a small number of New Caledonian parachutists who took part in the invasion of France.

In Paris, he managed to contact his brother Jules, who had bpen made a prisoner of war by the Germans when a member of the crew of the “Notou,” the Nickel Co. collier sunk by a,raider in the South Pacific in August, 1940.

The “Notou” was en route from Sydney to Noumea and nothing definite was known of her fate for many months.