News From Puka Puka
p. 88 · Read in the full issue
From Qur Own Correspondent
Mangaia, Aug. 1.
IN a personal letter to this correspondent, the Resident Agent of Puka Puka (Danger Island), refers to the trade in conra and mats carried on at that isolated outpost of the Cook group.
This commerce, small though it is, has made a great difference in the natives standard of living. Puka Puka being a “fish and coconuts’’ atoll, there has been, in the cast, very little comfort, for them, and Mr. Savage, the present RA, has en deavoured to improve matters.
He remarks that his atoll, in spite of a comparative poverty, has escaped en tirely the epidemics that have caused so much sickness, and so many deaths, in the Lower Cooks. This immunity is as cribed to the paucity of shipping calls.
At writing, the atoll had produced 75 tons of conra, which is being prepared for shipment.' Another cargo, of the same weight, is expected to be exported by the final ship call of the year.
Mr Savage concludes his letter by stating, with feeling, that he has for gotten the taste of bread. Life in the isolated Northern Cooks is hard for a European.