Pago Pago is ‘A Drowned Valley'
p. 89 · Read in the full issue
Drowned Valley'
Chasing: through some old Pacific lands books for the story of how Com ander R. W. Meade, of USS “Nara msett”, persuaded High Chief Mauga give the United States exclusive irt rights over Pago Pago harbour in 72, I came across the statement: [his harbour of Pago Pago apparently is once the crater of an extinct vol no, and the sea broke into it, and ns created for us the best landlocked irt in this part of the Pacific”.
I was reminded of an incident in igo Pago, last November. I was with small party, and I told a New •lander, from the “Tofua”, of the -called volcanic origin of the har or.
Whereupon I was smartly stepped ion by my amiable and agreeable ist, Mr. Edward W. Johnson. He id that that theory had been blown pieces, long ago, by the scientists. |e scientists insisted that Pago Pago |s actually a “drowned valley”—vol noes do not figure in its record.
Whatever its geological history, Pago igo is at once the Pacific’s snuggest irt. and the most worthy outpost of nerican hospitality in the South iclfic.—R.W.R.