Island Of Love

Back in 1769 a leaflet appeared in France which told about Louis de Bougainville's great voyage around the world and of his sensational discovery of an island of beautiful people named New Cythera.

The news fascinated everybody, and all wanted to hear about the new island, so named by Bougainville as a tribute to the goddess of love and beauty. An islander whom Bougain ville brought with him was feted.

It was another two years before they could read the full story in Bougainville’s official account of his voyage, and in the meantime it be came known that Bougainville was not the first European discoverer of New Cythera—the English Captain Wallis had, unknown to Bougainville, come across the island eight months previously. Today it is known as Tahiti.

But the little 1769 newsletter had whetted the public’s appetite for the South Seas, where the women were “very hospitable, very gracious, and quick to caress”, and where the husbands considered the signs of tenderness the French sailors showed towards their beautiful and hospitable women not objectionable but “as a homage and honour”.

On New Cythera there were “no lions, leopards or tigers, nor are there any other savage beasts, snakes or poisonous animals. These people are

by nature vivacious and gay . . . they dance naturally and without any set order”.

Probably never since then has the French public, or any other, lost its interest in the supposed paradise that was Tahiti.

That original newsletter has now been published for the first time in English by the University of Minne sota Press, Minneapolis, in a small limited edition of 750 numbered copies. The translator, Professor L.

Davis Hammond, has included notes, and an introduction which places the newsletter in its historical setting and describes its impact on Bougainville’s countrymen. The original newsletter is also reproduced in facsimile.

Altogether, an attractively produced

oddity.'

SI.

(News Prom New Cythera. Our

copy distributed by Oxford University Press, Australian price, $7.25).

LIFE was pretty feudal in the cane fields of Fiji half a century and more ago, with conditions for the Indian labour bordering on slavery.

It was not a pretty picture then, and

it is not a pretty picture as depicted by the late Walter Gill in an auto biography, Turn North-East at the " Tombstone .

Gill spent 11 years in the north west of Viti Levu as a CSR Co. over seer, and on his own admission was at times as ruthless as any overseer.

Much of his labour was drawn from the slums of Calcutta, Madras and other Indian cities, and knowing only the law of the jungle, a show of strength was apparently thought necessary if the industry was to keep going.

Apart from detailing what work was like in the mills and in the field, Gill also finds space to give an idea of what life was like outside the in dustry. He had his little brushes with the “colonial” types, some of whom are still recognisable.—HNß.

(Turn North-East At The Tomb

STONE. Rigby Ltd.. $3.95).

TOURISTS from temperate zones as well as residents of the Pacific should be interested in two small colour books produced (and sold) by Dorothy and Bob Hargreaves of Honolulu.

One is called Tropical Trees of the Pacific and the other Tropical Blos soms of the Pacific.

They are in full colour and local names for some of the Pacific islands plants are given, as well as the popular and botanical names. There is a description of each tree or flower plus a bit of folk lore about them.

Even people who have been knock ing about the Pacific for a long time might learn something from the books. This reviewer has lost count of the times she has asked a Fijian or a Samoan or a New Guinean “What is that?” only to be told in careful English: “That is a flower.” (Or “a tree.”) Yes, you know the confounded thing is a flower (or a tree) but what do they call it?

Apparently not many Fijians, Samoans or New Guineans bother to call any specific bit of vegetation anything special (unless it’s edible), so the answer is generally a blank look.

These small books will provide a do-it-yourself guide and fill in some of the blanks. In addition they are attractive and would be suitable for small gifts (especially at this time of the year).

However, at the moment they ap pear to be available only direct from the authors/publishers Box 895 Kailua, Hawaii, 96734. Retail price is SUS 2 plus postage. The equivalent of two dollars in any of the South Pacific currencies should do the job.—lT.

FOR over 300 years ships have been regularly wrecking them selves off Australia’s rugged coast line. Hazards of the Sea by Captain John Noble recounts many of these tragedies and the fates of their mainly Dutch and British crews.

Captain Noble begins with the first recorded shipwreck in Australian waters; although the Dutch, some six years before, had made the first landfall it was a British East India man, the Tryal, which first ran aground on what is now Tryal Rocks, with 100 crew and passengers lost.

Following his notable mishaps at sea chronologically, Captain Noble arrives at Ben Boyd, who in 1847, sent an Australian blackbirding expedition into the South Seas.

Captain Noble also narrates the story of the Tahiti, which ran down a Sydney ferry, and some years later, sank in mid-ocean after a break in her tail shaft, and the Burns Philp motorship, Malabar, which ran aground on rocks at what was later named Malabar near Botany Bay.

(Hazards Op The Sea, Angus &

Robertson Ltd., $4.95).