Tropicalities
pp. 79-80 · Read in the full issue
Magazine Section
Tonga’S Sabbath And The
Royal Visit
MEN in high places have been shaking solemn heads over Tonga’s predicament in respect of the Royal visit.
The Royal party arrives in Nukua lofa on Sunday, December 20. The Tongan nation, in traditional fashion, wishes to honour a great occasion with feasting and .dancing.
But the Tongans have been very strictly brought up, as Methodists, and the Sabbath Day really is observed there. Traditionally, they may not feast or dance on a Sun day.
The matter is under serious con sideration. One plan generally favoured is that the Tongan Par liament shall pass a special law providing that at this particular week-end, in view of the special circumstances, the Sabbath shall be observed on either the Saturday or Monday.
The Seventh Day Adventist Mission, influential in this part of the Pacific, now is perturbed, in its turn. In most countries, the SDA Church observes Sabbath on Satur day ; but in Tonga it always has observed the Tongan Sunday as a Sunday. If you look at the map, you will see why.
At Tonga, in order that the Tongan day shall coincide with the Fiji and New Zealand day, the 180th degree of Longitude is bent to go eastwards of Tonga, so that, for general and commercial conveni ence, Tonga may stay on Eastern time.
But the SDA Church in Tonga never would accept that bending. In Tonga, the SDA Sabbath is observed on the Saturday of Western time— which, of coiirse, is the Sunday of Eastern time (Australia, New Zea
land, Fiji).
If the Tongan Parliament decides to declare the Saturday preceding the Royal visit to be the Sabbath Day, the SDA Mission will have an awkward choice to make. But Jiaybe, in deference to the SDA people, they will fix on the Mon
iay.-
Rwr.
Fwo-Horse Shay For Danny
Leahy
RECENTLY an ancient but well preserved family buggy was shipped from Queensland to the Jew Guinea Highlands, where, it is mderstood, it 'will be used by Mr )an Leahy between Mt. Hagen erodrome and Government Station
and his establishment, which is about 2,000 feet higher up.
The theory is that it will be far cheaper to maintain the tw r o horses that will pull the buggy than to run a jeep—favourite transport now in those parts—in a place where petrol is about 14 - per gallon.
Buggies are an unknown quantity in the NG Highlands, where trans portation skipped right from the Stone Age to DC3’s. But the Leahy brothers are ingenious fellows, and it was Danny who successfully mated a Shetland stallion with a Clydesdale (or similar) mare. Any one who can engineer a feat like that should find buggy-driving on Highland tracks just a push-over.
Tough Assignment
According to the Sydney Daily Telegraph, a Certain Yeung Lady will shortly leave
Sydney for Honiara, where she will take a job with the BSIP Govern ment as a stenographer. The C.Y.L. is reported to have said: “I only took the job so that I could spread the Baha’i faith to the islanders in my spare time.”
The Baha’i faith was founded by a Persian teacher early last century.
There are adherents in most countries; they are not Christians.
Like Jimmy Edwards, of rad o fame, we boggle at the thought of the C.Y.L. getting the Baha’i idea over to the wooden Solomon Islanders who speak a Pidgin English of their own and who already have six varieties of Christian mission to take care of their spiritual needs.
Of course, we couldn’t agree more on that mere means-to-an-end plain work: the whole sordid busi ness should be called off.
In the meantime, we would like to remind this 24-year-old that the BSIP holds the South Pacific cham pmnship for having killed off more missionaries—including a brace of Bishops—in the last 100 years than any other Islands group.
It’S Wet In The Dry—In Suva
DULL, exceptionally wet, and
rather warm” was the official , description of July conditions at Fiji s most meteorologically miser able corner, Suva.
Just how damp it was, the records revealed. Not since meteorological records began at the Fiji capital in
1884 had more July rain fallen — 21.37 inches. Previous highest was 18.49 inches in July, 1913. Tem peratures, too, were higher by 1.1 degrees average than ever before recorded.
Heaviest fall of the month was on July 5, when 11.32 inches fell out of the local sky. (July is the middle of the “dry season” in Fiji).
On the north-west coast of Viti Levu the sun shone clear and according to the book—but Suva saw just 91.7 hours of bright sun shine in the month.—J.P.S.
But, since that was written, southern Viti Levu has known all the rigours of a drought—Editor,
From Victoria To Elizabeth
II THIS is a topicality. Comparing the Victorian with the Second Elizabethan era, New Common wealth, a UK magazine comments on changed national habits—that is, so far as the UK is concerned.
To-day, they say, the sight of a drunk in a public place is rare.
Then, there were few streets where, on Saturday nights, men and women were not seen the worse for wear.
The annual consumption of beer in England (“and it was beer then”) has fallen from a Victorian per capita total of 31 gallons per annum to 18 gallons; spirits from 11 gallons per head per annum to one fifth of a gallon. But Britons drink about twice as much milk now as they did at the beginning of the century, 8 pounds of tea per head per year (an increase of two pounds), smoke twice as much to bacco, eat half as much meat (post war rationing), as much butter (in spite of rationing) and 18 pounds of margarine per head—which is 18 pounds more than grandfather ate because grandfather did not know about marg.
The figures are interesting but certainly have no relation to the trend of events in Australasia where the per capita consumption of beer is bigger than ever. Nor can it be said that drunks are never seen here in public places.
Many people blame the abuse of liquor in Australia on the licensing laws of the majority of the States and what is called the “six o’clock swill.” But anyone who has had the misfortune to be stuck in a Tas manian industrial town on a Fri day or Saturday night can speak with equal feeling about the 10 o’clock swill. At this time, the drinkers are emptied out of the bars to howl and brawl around the pubs for the next two hours.
The trouble does not seem to lie so much with the liquor laws as in the fact that thb average Aus tralasian cannot drink like a civil ised being. (Tasmania and Queens land are the only two Australian States where six o’clock closing of bars is not enforced).
DR. C. E. FOX (at left) is synonymous with the second 50 years of the Melanesian Mission, and is at present writing the history of the Mission’s first 100 years, 1849-1949.
He was born in England in 1878, went to New Zealand in 1884 with his family and graduated MA with Ist class Honours in 1899. He was then accepted for the Mission, but the doctor turned him down because “he would never be strong enough for the tropics’’!
In 1902 he got into the Mission by the back door of Norfolk Island, as a teacher at the school there for natives collected in the Solomons and New Hebrides. The school flourished from 1866 to 1926, by which time the mission had sufficient schools established in the islands them selves.
Dr. Fox was ordained a priest in 1906, and after a visit to the Solomons in 1908 started a school on San Cristobal in 1910. In this year he wrote his “Intro duction to Oceanic Language’’ and in 1918 the “Threshold of the Pacific’’ for which he was made Doctor of Letters.
He has also compiled dictionaries of the Arosi, Lau and Nggela languages.
After being Headmaster of Pawa school from 1924 to 1932, Dr. Fox joined the native teachers of the Melanesian Brotherhood and did evangelistic work all over the Solomons and New Britain.
When the Japanese war started, Dr. Fox became a Coastwatcher. In 1952 he was awarded the MBE.—BRETT HILDER,