OBITUARY

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 865, 11 July 1910, Page 7

OBITUARY

ISLAND MONARCH DIES. By Tolejrflph— Press Association—Copyright. LondOT, July 8. The death is announced of Mr. George Clunies-Ross, proprietor and chief of the Cocos (or Keeling) Islands, in the South Indian Ocean. •

The Koss family has been in possession of the Keeling Islands for over thrccqnarters of a century. Tho group is six hundred miles south of Sumatra, out in the Indian Ocean, and for some years past has been- one of the stations on tho Eastern Extension Company's Australia and South African cable. One of the younger members of the Koss family. Air. K«nneth Ross, was recently a student at Nelson College. Tlie Keeling Group consists of twentythree small 'islands, 9! miles being the greatest width of the whole atoll. _ The group is well known as having furnished Darwin with the typical example of an atoll or lagoon island. The islands were discovered in lfiO9 by William Keeling on liis way Home from the Moluccas. In 1823 Alexander Hare, an English adventurer, settled in the southernmost island wilh a number of slaves. Some two or three years after, a Scotchman, J. Tiess, who had commanded a brig during the English occupation of Java, fettled with hie family on Direction Island, and his little colony was scon strengthened by Hare's runaway slaves. The islands were taken under British protection in lP.iti. ami since 1903 have been under the jurisdiction of the Governor of the Straits Settlements. The latent returns {rive the population of l.lie group as G-iO—Two European?, 570 Cocos islanders, and G7 Bantsimose.

AN AMERICAN AUTHOR.

New York, July S. Mr. William James Rolfo. the American author, is dead. Mr. Rolfe edited many editions of English standard works, and lias compiled numbers of American students' manuals.