Pleasant Legends

But How True Are They?

By a Staff Writer

One of the advantages (or penalties) of being very old is that you are always “good” for a newspaper story.

George Bernard sh a w found this when he was in his 90’s; Somerset Maugham is finding the same in his old age; and Tui Malila, of Tonga, is yet another who, now that he is old and venerable, is given “the treatment” by newspaper reporters.

Tui Malila, is the ancient tortoise that roams the palace grounds in Nukualofa. His shell is battered, he is apparently blind, and tradition says that he came to Tonga as a gift from Captain Cook.

One of the latest reporters to do a feature on Tui Malila is one Robert Gilmore, who, writing in the Auck land Star, in January, said: “When Tonga builds, soon, her first hotel and starts to seek tourists, her num ber one tourist attraction could be ‘the world’s oldest living animal’. ‘That seemingly undisputed title attaches to a tortoise on whom the

Tongans officially have bestowed the rank of chief.”

Gilmore went on to say that although Captain Cook was said to have left Tui Malila in Tonga in the 1770’5, even Tongan official pub lications did not agree in theii accounts of his arrival in the Group.

The official record of the British Royal visit to Tonga in 1953 states that Cook gave Tui Malila and a female mate to a chief called Sioeli Pangi, and that the chief gave the pair to the king’s daughter.

But a current handbook on Tonga, published by the Government and sold to tourists, says that, “accord ing to palace records”, Cook gave the tortoises to the king.

Gilmore pointed out, correctly, that Cook made no mention of a gift of a tortoise to anyone in Tonga in his “voluminous papers”; and he might have added that there is no record of such a gift in the papers of any of Cook’s companions, either.

This has been pointed out in PIM articles from time to time, writers having thrown serious doubts on the validity of the Cook tradition.

More Old Tortoises However, you really get suspicious when you find out that there are several other tortoises roaming the world today that are also reputed to have been left behind by Captain Cook.

In Sydney’s Taronga Park Zoo, for example, there is an ancient tortoise that used to roam in the Botanic Gardens and which, years ago, is said to have been brought from Tonga where Captain Cook had left it as a gift.

The famous circumnavigator is also said to have left three of the creatures in Tahiti, where, in the years before the war, they used to wander in the grounds of the Papeete Museum.

And if that were not enough, Cap tain Cook is also credited with bring ing an ancient tortoise to the South Atlantic island of St. Helena, This tortoise is called Jonathan.

According to an article released by the United Kingdom Information Service in Australia, Captain Cook presented Jonathan to friends in St, Helena in 1775, and it adds that Cook brought it from the Galapagos.

And that bit about the Gala pagos Islands shows how legends about tortoises—and Captain Cook— come to be made, for these islands were among the few in the Pacific that Cook did not visit.

One of the three tortoises that used to roam the grounds of Papeete's museum before the museum was shifted to its present temporary premises. The girl leaning over it is called Pepe.