Back To The Horse

—And Some Peace

Papeete, Mar. 1.

HOW utterly Tahiti and neighbouring archipelagoes have been over whelmed by the Machirte and Jazz Age, is indicated by the almost total disappearance of the horse.

The barometer of tardy post-war re construction is the unabated insolence humble seekers after merchandise have to endure from attendants in some of our Papeete emporiums.

Even our plant life has conformed to the New Era. Many growths have emulated the insolence in the shops by sprouting sharp thorns and irritating burrs.

All our lotus plants have, long ago, been suffocated by carbon-monoxide gas from internal-combustion motors.

Would-be lotus-eaters from abroad have been constrained to seek consolation in the dismal society of the Brotherhood of the Bottle. These disappointed way farers would have done better by staying at home; where the booze is cheaper, and of better quality.

Our native people of the districts are inspired with the spirit of Progress.

Every day they crowd the early morning passenger-freight trucks. At Papeete they pass a few hectic hours watching the endless procession of empty lorries pass and re-pass. When the Cathedral bell announces 4 o’clock they again crowd into the trucks, and arrive home at nightfall.

This custom has broadened the in fluence of 'urban culture over the remote countryside. The visible and audible symbols of this culture are internal combustion motors of all calibres, at tached to everything movable on land, and to everything which floats on the face of the waters.

So far as this writer can discover, all this has produced a general uneasy rest lessness, and the spread of the bad manners of the Papeete market-place, throughout the hinterland, without any compensating advantage to anyone.

For example: In the “Horse and Buggy Age,” copra was carried to convenient shipping-places about the island, loaded into sailing vessels, and transported to Papeete in ample time for despatch by the monthly steamers.

To-day, copra is rushed by truck and motor schooner to Papeete, there to accumulate storage and interest charges and to suffer rapid shrinkage of weight in torrid storehouses, while awaiting the arrival of a steamship.

A journey from the districts to Papeete by horse was a leisurely expedition through a smiling countryside, with fre quent stops for gossip with relatives and friends along the way.

On a journey by truck, one becomes merely an item of miscellaneous cargo

of pigs, fish and human beings, which is rushed to the appointed destination with all possible speed.

This technique of the New York Subway and the Chicago Stock Yards is part of the higher standard of living which

has produced so much felicity through out the world, TINDER the circumstances of the U Gadget Age, one may not forget one’s neighbour; but it is rather

difficult to obey the august command to “Love thy neighbour, as thyself.” When the person next door is possessed of a library of jazz records, an unmuffled petrol motor, a battery of noisy dogs, a hammer, a flock of militant roosters, and a disposition to “look upon the wine when it is red,” one’s milk of human kindness is inclined to disintegrate to curds and whey.

Prince John Taipelehake, second son of Queen Salote of Tonga, was in Suva for hospital treatment during May.

The death of Mrs, Violet Rositer oc curred in Auckland, NZ, on May 18. She was the wife of Mr. Frank Rositer, who was for many years in the PWD in Suva, Fiji. She is survived by her husband and her daughter, Mrs. Hubert Sabben.