SUWARROW ATOLL.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 91, 19 April 1927, Page 10

SUWARROW ATOLL.

A SETTLEMENT PROPOSAL. LONELIEST OF OUR ISLANDS. NO PERMANENT INHABITANTS. That most solitary and in point of history most romantic of our smaller coral islands in the Pacific. Snw arrow Atoll, may be the scene present 1\» of an interesting experiment in transference of native population. Suwarrow is a great ring-island, a series of green islets on a • >fl-mile long coral reef, enclosing a lagoon which formerly was "fished" for pearlshell. It lies about ">OO miles north of Ka rot on ga, and the same distance east of Samoa. It has no permanent inhabitants. in fact yhon H.M.s. Laburnum visited it last year it was quite deserted. It was lea-ed by the NewZealand ( lovernment some years ago a« a coconut plantation to an Auckland linn. A. I>. Donald. I.id., whose lease mils until ]!):>}.

About three Tnindrcd uiilo south of Smvarniw lies the tiny low island called Palmerston, which has a land area of one square mile and a ] »<>j>ll l;ition of a hundred people, mostly the descendants of the patriarchal trader John Marsters. who settled there with a native wife and retainers over ,-i\ty years I„i«t year the island was swept bv a hurricane and tidal wave, which destroved the greater part of the coconuts and other tood Mipplie-. and some time a2O it was proposed to transfer a portion of the native population to Suwarrow, where food i> plentiful, either permanently or until their home island recovers from the effects of the hurricane. latest news from the island received by the Cook Islands Department via Karotonga >tated that the Palmerston inhabitants did not view the proposed migration very favourably, preferring to see things out on their native islet. However, it may be that by this time some of the Marsters clan have sailed for lone Suwarrow in the schooner Tiara Taporo, which is at present the only trading vessel regularly visiting those remote dependencies of New Zealand. Should the proposed transference of population take place it will open another chapter in the curiously varied storv of Suwarrow. which has been the temporary home of all manner of sea rovers. Captain Rasmussen. of the Tiara Taporo. in a letter to the commander of H.M.s. Laburnum, made reference to the abundant food supply of Anchorage 1-land (or Home Island as it used to be called), the main island of the atoll, and its sister islets on the great leer. "All the natives who have lived on Suwarrow as labourer-." he said, "are always looking forward t:> going back there agaiu. To them the place is »

little paradise, abundant with fish, bird?, eggs, coconut, crabs, turtle, etc. So you see they do not look upon the island the way we do." No doubt it would be to the benefit of the Marsters clan, overcrowded on their hurricane-swept reefs, to distribute themselves over the two atolls. But islanders often exhibit a strong disinclination to migrate permanently to a new home. The whole population of Pitcairn Island was transferred to Norfolk Island in IS.">S. but it was onlv two years before some of them returned to their birthplace and many others followed. In the case of Palmerston. however. the distance intervening l»otwccn the two homes would ii"t be nearly so great as that between Pitrairn and Norfolk. A schooner would cover it in a couple of days with the prevailing S.L. trades.