Deserted Niuafo'ou

Now Blackened Waste in Many Areas

From Our Own Correspondent

Suva, Aug. 3.

NO longer “Tin Can Island,” lonely Niuafo’ou held the fascinated at tention of passengers in a New Zea land Dakota when the plane made a leisurely circuit of the deserted island yesterday.

Since the disastrous eruptions in Sep tember, 1946, aircraft of the direct Samoa-Fiji route frequently make a short off-course sweep over the famous island Approaching Niuafo’ou from the east, one’s first impression is that a singularly beautiful and fertile island lies below.

Heavy tropical growth, with a wealth of coconut palms, covers the whole strip of land between the sea and the great in land lake of Vai Lahi. But the circuit of the island reveals its tragedy.

The whole of the northern, western and south-western areas have been destroyed by the eruptions that have broken out at intervals between 1853 and 1946.

The northern coast, where the Govern ment centre, Angaha, stood until last September, is to-day a blackened waste.

The neighbouring still-fertile areas are pock-marked with what look like craters, which erupted without producing any great flow of lava.

This correspondent’s impression, while looking down on Niuafo’ou, was that sooner or later the destructive tide must swamp the whole of what was once prob ably the lovliest of all the Tongan islands.

Savaii, in Samoa, suffered similar dis asters at intervals until 1911. The bush has reclaimed all but the 1905-1911 lava fields in Savaii; but it will be a matter of generations before Niuafo’ou recovers —if no further eruptions occur.