COOK ISLANDS AFFAIRS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1194, 1 August 1911, Page 5

COOK ISLANDS AFFAIRS.

POSITION SERIOUS. "Our editor, who is in the. Cook Islands group on a business tour," says tho "Waifemata Post" of July 27, "writes per the 'Frisco boat that there is still considerable disquiet there, which has not at all been appeased by the recent yisit of Chief Justice Stout. Tho report recently published in an Auckland paper that ths disaffection amongst tho whites is confined to three persons is not. borne out by facts coming to light. Our representative's investigations show that the position is very serious. To complicate further the conditions existing, a number of trespassing Maori pigs have been shot, and the owners have retaliated by destroying bicycles belonging to the white lessee of the plantation, and t]iETO is not .the same respect shown the wjiitcs by natives as formerly. It is said the Commissioner is taking complaints in this connection too lightly." A private letter from Rarotonga, dated July 17, received in Wellington, confirms the statement as to the breaking up of the.bicycles, which belonged, to the eons of a planter residing opposite the iospital and the medical officer's residence, and within less than a quarter of a mile of Ngatipa, the abode of the Resident Commissioner (Captain J. E. Smith). The damage done by the natives ia estimated at nearly ,£25, but at the time of writing none of the offenders had been brought to book.