Isle of Pines for Tourists

Tourists

THE Isle of Pines, 30 miles from Noumea, reached through a net work of reefs, has in the past, been isolated, though it is, in fact, one of the loveliest isles of the Caledonian archipelago. It has an interesting history and a magnificent climate.

Now, an attempt is being made to at tract tourists, and the administration has agreed to subsidise the ship “Mollie Pas III,” belonging to that worthy old mariner Captain Pons, which will assure something like a regular service.

The Isle of Pines is the island where Captain Cook anchored during his second Pacific voyage, naming one little cay, Botany Isle. The place is remarkable for its giant limestone caves, for its extra ordinary mushroom-shaped rocks which litter the magnificent bay of Upi, for its big outrigger canoes which travel up to 15 knots an hour outside the reef, for its prehistoric mounds on the plateau which remind one of those on Salisbury Plain, and for its water supply from undersea springs coming right from the Caledo nian mainland.

In the 1850 s this island was a bone of contention between the British (who wanted it as a naval coaling station, and whose sandalwood traders, notably Pad don, Towns and Underwood, were firmly installed) and the French, The island is also famous for its remarkable prehis toric-looking Captain Cook pines; and recently it was in the news when natives found the wreck of the Sydney launch and the starving sailor, Cush whose mates had perished of famine while being blown across the Coral Sea.

There on the Isle, for nearly ten years (until a general amnesty was granted) between 2,000 and 3,000 exiles of the Paris Commune (of 1871) and a few hun

dred Arab survivors of the Kabyle Revolt of the 1870 s, were camped in three or four villages, the remains of which may still be seen. The Communards included many men of high intellectual attain ment, and they produced their own weekly newspaper, copies of which may still be seen in the Catholic Mission at Vao.

Attempts to escape to Australia were generally unsuccessful, but frequent, on one occasion a party of 19 who had fitted up an old boat, and who were led by a well-known Paris doctor, were drowned in a stormy passage through the reefs.

H.E.L.P.