ATOLLS OF TOKELAU.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 37, 13 February 1926, Page 21

ATOLLS OF TOKELAU.

OUR NEW POSSESSION. A CONTENTED POPULATION, (By "TALOFA.") "The King of Nukunono was the only Catholic King whom we met in the thousands of miles over which we I travelled. We found this potentate a veritable King Cole, a merry old soul, playing a rude native drum with great skill, singing to his own accompaniment, full of life and action, and with a queen as fat and merry and goodheiarted as" himself. His subjects are f ew —not over 100 in the whole island. They do not regard him with the awe that King Jibberik, of Majuro (in the Marshall Islands) inspires, but they love and obey him, and appeared to be a bright and happy people. Long life to him, and to old King John of Atafu, and to numerous other good and honest potentates in those far-away lagoon islands. May they yet achieve their great desire and 'belong Beritane,' instead of being forced under the flag of other nations." That was what the late Mr. Frederick J. Moss, one-time M.H.8., wrote more than forty years ago of a little monarch in one of the Tokelau Islands, otherwise the Union Group, a series of atolls lying in the Central Pacific and north of Samoa. Mr. Moss made a long cruise through the Pacific in Henderson and Macfarlane's three-masted schooner Buster; that was in the days when Auckland vessels carried the flag of trade as far away as the Caroline Islands. Good old "King Cole" of Nukunono has gone to the Polynesian paradise long ago, but his people achieved their hearts' desire They have belonged to "Beritane" some ten years, and now NewZealand is taking them under her protective wing. Not a Burden. The Tokelaus will not be a burden on' New Zealand. That is the first and rather cheerful item that strikes one on reading through the excellent, report—a model of a report, topographical, political, social and economic—sent up by General Sir George Richardson to the Department of External Affairs. What little expenditure is necessary is more than balanced by the .revenue, chiefly derived from the copra tax established by the Imperial Government's Administration. Anything now needed in the way of improving the comfort of life in the little group, such as a good water supply and medical attention, will be covered by the existing revenue. Geographical descriptions of the Tokelau Islands, at any rate, such as have appeared in print, have been very bald and lacking in detail But now attached to the report of Samoa's Administrator are maps of the group, made by a Government surveyor who went up with General Richardson from Apia in the steamer Lady Roberts. These maps are beautifully made and are satisfyingly full of information. For instance, they give the names of the whole of the islets which compose the series of three groups. Imagine large, irregular rings and rough triangles of coral reef, assaulted on their outer sides by a huge, never-ceasing surf, these reefs enclosing shallow lagoons, dotted with coral banks and islets, and rising from the main reef at irregular intervals the tall groves of coconuts that indicate the various islands. Such are Atafu, Nukunono and Fakaofu, the three atoll systems that compose the Tokelau Archipelago. There is another that geographically belongs to the Tokelaus —Swain's Island, a jewel of an 'island, set down also on the charts as Gente Hermose, but it belongs to the United States. Many Islets. There is but one main village on each atoll, and it stands under the shady palms on /the lee side of the island. When we come to reckon up all the reef-islets —some of them bear familiar Maori names, such as Motuiti, meaning "little island'—we find there are just a hundred and two of them. That gives . an islet to every ten of the population. But such a distribution would scarcely suit; it is the three main islands" in each atoll that carry most of the natives. To give some dimensions and distances I summarise:—Atafu atoll ia eight miles in circumference and has 19 islets on its reef; Nukunono is 24 miles, with 22 islets; and Fakaofu is 16 miles round and has 61 islets The largest island is on the east»coast of Atafu; ft is four miles long and 300 yards wide; it was there that Mr. Moss met his merry old ""King Cole." Robert Louis Stevenson's description of some of the atolls in the Paumotus would exactly suit such a place as Atafu or Fakaofu. "Conceive, on a vast scale, the submerged hoop of the duck-hunter, trimmed with green rushes to conceal his head —water within, water without —you have the image of the perfect atoll. Conceive one that has been partly plucked of its rush fringe"— that is the average atoll. The Tokelau rushes are huge as the coconut palms, in countless thousands, and with them much heavier timber, though not so tall—the timber tree called tauanave. which is used for making canoes and boxes. A Happy People. A fact very pleasant to read is that these Tokelau people, numbering just over a thousand, are healthy and happy. Theirs is a monotonous life; their diet; is chiefly coconut and fish; they have few amusements; yet they are contented—an amiable set of brown folks, living in what are described as "model villages, very neat and clean." They are partly Samoan and partly of Gilbert Island- blood. It was observed of them that they did not possess either the finished oratory or the abundant folk-lore of Samoa. This is natural enough, considering the vast difference between large, mountainous islands of varied landscape and low, flat ribbons of coral almost level with the sea, and the traditions and habits that each type of island produces. There are no Europeans on any of the islands, and there are not likely to be any. Old Adam Main, a retired sea captain, who lived on Nukunono, was drowned there in a great hurricane ten years or so ago. The native population alone is quite enough for these little clusters of coral and palms. Indeed, that is the only problem of the future in this tiny new dependency of ours. The population is increasing, slowly, but steadily, and it is extremely probable that it will be necessary before many years to transfer some to : the island Upolu, Samoa. So Polynesian history repeats itself. It was i lack of sufficient land to grow food that ' caused many a South Sea long-distance. , canoe voyage in past centuries.