"Kon Tiki" Raft Voyagers

Now In Tahiti

THE six young Norwegian “Kon Tiki” raft scientists, led by Mr. Thor Heyerdahl, arrived in Papeete on August 28. They had made the journey from Raroia Reefs, where they had gone aground earlier in the month, in the French Government vessel “Tamara.”

The raft was towed.

The Norwegians were trying to estab lish the possibility of pre-Inca inhabi tants of Peru having reached the Poly nesian Islands now known as French Oceania, using nothing but primitive balsa rafts and the Humbolt Current, which sweeps westward from Peru.

On their raft, which they called “Kon Tiki” after the ancient Peruvian Sun god, they left Callao, Peru, on April 29, and they completed 4,360 miles drift to the Tuamotu Group in 102 days.

The raft was badly damaged on the Raroia Reefs. Natives found the men and took them to their island, about six miles away, from which they were later rescued by the French Government vessel.

Having proved the feasability of drift voyages by the ancients from South America to South-eastern Polynesia, the scientists will now return to Norway by way of the United States.

Madame Boucher, of Farino, New Caledonia, has received official notifica tion that her son, Rene Gabriel, was shot by the Germans in France on August 14, 1944. He left Noumea prior to the war, and during it he served with the French Army with the rank of sergeant. He was captured and later released by the Germans, but immediately joined the Re sistance Movement. He thus joined the honoured ranks of war heroes. The news of his death reached his mother through the services of M. Henri Lafleur, New Caledonia’s Councillor of the Republic, now in Paris.