A Topical Look At Tonga

Books on Tonga are still so rare that it is good to welcome a new one. Kenneth Bain's “The Friendly Islanders” adds to the general picture at a time when there is special interest in the kingdom and its newly-crowned king.

f is a lightweight picture of the day-to-day social scene in Tonga seen by a New Zealander who s for a few years secretary to ! Government of Tonga.

This is a post to which colonial icers from Fiji have been tradi nally seconded, and Mr. Bain is t the first colonial officer to have itten a book about the Friendly mders. The late J. S. Neill, form- British consul, published his me tirs in 1955; and Basil Thomson’s versions of a Prime Minister, pub led in 1894, is still availabe oc ionally on the secondhand market.

Mr. Bain’s book is closer to Thom i’s entertaining work than to ill’s.

Perhaps because Mr. Bain is now charge of the South Pacific Office, /a (not to be confused with the ith Pacific Commission) and thus itinues to take an active part in onial administration, his book kes no political predictions, or susses any weighty economic prob is. liVe hear about Tongan picture atres, sport, whaling, Sunday ob vance, Tin Can Island, the usual rist sights and that ever-famous ndon ride in the rain by Queen ote. The most interesting chapter on Queen Salote’s death and ial.

Mr. Bain’s writing style occasion ally falls into the pedestrian, especially when he gives us long quotations of dialogue. But anybody looking for topical information on the Tongan way of doing things will find it an attractive investment, if one perhaps would like to have seen more explanation attempted as to why Tongans do certain things.

But there are some rewarding passages, such as: “It is said with some truth that the Polynesian way of life is bound up in the three fun damental elements of human exist ence—birth, marriage and death. The contemporary observer might perhaps add a fourth—the auction sale. Oc curring albeit spasmodically but, for the Friendly Islander, rather more frequently than the other three, the Tongan auction sale is Middle East ern in the fervour, if not in the bargaining skill, of the participants.

“The Tongan lives domestically and financially for the day. At an auction sale, he lives for the moment —the supreme moment when he dis gorges an outrageous sum for an unnecessary article and thus achieves that peerless but short-lived satis faction of having beaten a persistent rival.”

Most of the illustrations are Rob Wright’s photographs.—Sl.

(The Friendly Islanders. Pub

lished by Hodder and Stoughton. $4.60.)

• These women, of Funafuti Atoll, Ellice Islands, no doubt saw a good deal of Dr. Gerd Koch when he was tape recording indigenous music in their archi pelago between 1960 and 1963. The women are showing off some of their fine mats, fans, skirts and basketware.