"LAM GOING BACK."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 143, 18 June 1936, Page 9

"LAM GOING BACK."

ISLAND EXPERIENCES.

WHITE WOMAN IN PACIFIC.

" MARVELLOUS FRIEND SJ> i (Special.—By Air Mail.) LONDON, May 23. A woman who for 20 years has been living, the only white woman, among natives on the scattered coral atolls of the Southern Pacific has arrived in London, and is already packing her trunks to go to some more islands, the 94 tiny Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean. She is the wife of Mr. Arthur F. Grimble, who has spent his life as a district officer and administrator for the Colonial Office, and has just been appointed Governor of the Seychelles.

Mrs. Grimble had her four babies iu the Gilbert Jslands. Until they were five or six years old they spoke Gilbertese, and only that. She brought them here on a visit, and had to have the;ii taught English. As a bride Mrs. Grimble went out to Ocean Inland in 1914. A year later she was living in a coconut and pandanu.s hut on Tarawa, in the northern Gilberts, a crescent of coral and sand 50 miles from the nearest island, on which were only natives.

: "I was alone for a month at a time/* she said. "At first by myself, and then with the children, while my -husband was away visiting the rest of the islands, in an open boat with a native crew. I wasn't afraid of the islanders, but of the big winds. The people are the finest in the world, magnificent friends. I learned their language, their j eongs and dances, their way of looking at life. I spent all my spare time with the mothers and babies. They were good to me when my babies were born 6"0 miles from anywhere, with only sea and scattered islands around. We lived on fish, coconuts, pandanus fruit, chicken and eggs and canned goods. We had no vegetable.?, no potatoes, and for 20 years no fresh meat."