The Editors’ Mailbag

on Luckner’s Treasure

Mr. Hermann Kirmis, a PIM ider who now lives in the British me of Germany, but who 40 years 0 lived in Western Samoa, thinks it it is likely that von Luckner was irching for treasure when he visited Dpelia, in 1939. (It was suggested a PIM article in July, 1951, that er the wreck of the Seeadler on )pelia, von Luckner hid treasure valuables there before he escaped a motor boat, and that during his rid cruise of 1939 he went to the md and retrieved it.) tfr. Kirmis met von Luckner after had been captured and interned an island near Auckland. Mr. mis was there also as an unwilling :st of the NZ Government., He > sent back to Germany in 1919 1 met von Luckner several times although von Luckner spoke ;ly of his war-time raiding, he did mention treasure in any shape form. However, recently Mr. mis made some inquiries and nd that von Luckner, when re ing in lectures to Mopelia, spoke his expedition to the schatzgra «sel Mopelia”—meaning treasure ad. This, thinks Mr. Kirmis, ws pretty conclusively what was yon Luckner’s mind when he went k to Mopelia in 1939.

ATER.—Since the above was ten, a Reuter correspondent has >rted from Berlin that Count x von Luckner is going to a South ific island to search for certain ed treasure of the Incas. Von kner says that when the Spaniards •whelmed the Incas in Peru, the i priests tried to save a large len god from their hands by mg it into bars and burying it on island. All the ship’s company * killed, except two. The latter rned to the island, where one was d. The other got the loot, hid >mewhere else, and left it there, his deathbed, he gave it to the ch, and drew a map to show its tion. Von Luckner proceeded: According to this plan, the gold ear a huge stone marked with ?n which looks like a sombrero, island has been found and so the stone. )n the stone are chiselled names bout 80 ships which have been J for the gold, was there in 1937 and tried to the gold with a divining rod. It no use. Next time I shall try a mine-detector and shall find

‘I shall use the gold to enable young people to travel and understand one another.”

Von Luckner, presumably, was re ferring to Mopelia (or Mopiha) island, which is on the new air route, and directly west of Tahiti.

Japan’s Gift to the Islands

A writer in June PIM, describing the anxiety with which countries around the Pacific are guarding their ports against invasion by the giant snail of Madagascar introduced into the Pacific Islands in wartime by the Japanese—said that the snail’s eggs hatch out a few hours after they are laid. An expert entomologist, writing from Southeast Asia, says this is not correct. The pest’s eggs do not hatch until from 9to 11 days after they are laid. This does give the port guardians a better chance of dealing with the thing.

P-NG Stamps Past Tense

Mr. J. Nixonwestwood of Welling ton, NZ, and an ex-Territorian, does not think much of the new issue of Papua-New Guinea postage stamps. (See PIM front cover September.) In particular he takes exception to the one that depicts the two Buin boys in their headdress—he says that he has a copy of the original photo graph of those lads and was with the photographer when he took it—and to the two native shepherds who are armed with bows and arrows.

He feels that some of the stamps should have depicted some of the achievements of Australia during her long years of administration there.

If the stamps have the run of some of the earlier issues, he feels that overseas people will think that the Territories are still in the Stone and bow-and-arrow stage. (To which the cynic, no doubt, will reply, “Well, aren’t they?”)

Coastwatchers’ Memorial

A New Zealand reader suggests that no more fitting memorial to the Western Pacific coastwatchers of World War II could be erected than a radio broadcasting station to serve the Solomons-New Guinea area.

Just as in Auckland a splendid radio-telegraph station, which serves aircraft and shipping in the Pacific area, was dedicated to the memory of Captain Edwin C. Musick (who lost his life when pioneering Pan American Airways commercial

trans-Pacific flying-boat service) so also could a much-needed radio station be a perpetual and practical reminder of the work of the coast watchers and their secret radio transmitters which served the Allied powers so well.

Some Tongan History

When we re-printed some old Bulletin verses in the August PIM we said that the author was “Mr.

Masterton who, over 40 years ago, was British Consul in Nukualofa.”

Mr. J. D. Whitcombe, of Auck land, writes that Mr. J. Masterton was never British Consul in Tonga, but was appointed Vice-British Con sul, through the office of the High Commissioner in Fiji. His only son, Allan Masterton, was for some time clerk to the British Consul in Nuku alofa. Mr. J. Masterton, an English journalist, arrived in Tonga about 1893, went on to Australia and NZ, and returned to and settled in Nukualofa, where he married Miss Ella Watkin (only daughter of the late Rev. J. B. Watkin, then head of the Free Church of Tonga). He was Nukualofa postmaster for many years.

Mr. Whitcombe has supplied a valuable list of British Consuls in Tonga since 1860. It has been filed for inclusion in the next edition of the Pacific Islands Year Book.

Where Virtue Resides

Well-known American author J. C.

Lucas sends a note apropos of the Nordman story on page 67 of May

Pim:

“No doubt it’s a standard wheeze in some sections of Polynesia. But I should certainly advance as a can didate for its first appearance in print the version contained in Herman Melville’s Omoo. Some miscreant has gone off with my copy, I find, but anyway it goes: He asks a Tahitian girl is she mickonaree? and she says, with the indicated gestures,, first laying her hand on her heart: ‘Me mickonaree here—but me no mickonaree here ’ —or words to that effect. ‘Personally I think both versions are descendants of the ancient school boy howler, identifying Scylla (of Scylla & Charybdis, Ltd.) as ‘a mythological creature that was a vir gin from the waist up.’ ”

Mr. Phillip E. Hairing, of the American Consular Service who was paying a visit to Tahiti, was involved in an accident in Papeete on Nov yember 1 when the car he was driv ing crashed over a bridge into a ditch. He was not seriously injured.