MANGAIA

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 167, 11 April 1935, Page 5

MANGAIA

A Paradise of the Pacific INTRODUCTION TO CANOES ' (By R. K. Palmer.) IV. Whoever first called some dot in the ocean an island paradise said the last word about Mangaia, the first island the Matai reached on her way from Rarotonga round the lower group. The shouts and laughs of natives woke us up that morning, and we jumped to portholes to sec them alongside the ship iu their long outrigger canoes, joking with the eailois on deck'. Iu the background was their island, much higher than most, of its size, protected by a high reef which can be negotiated only by canoes. The native cijnoc looks an inadequate vessel for working cargo. Its length seems poor compensation for its extreme narrowness, and though the outrigger is solid, it gives no great impression ot stability. But with skilful handling, which they get in Mangaia, the canoes can move cargo very fast. One of those alongside was singled out from the workaday craft bv neat painting and by three seats set on the gunwales and with backs and sides carved from wood. This was the vice-regal barge, specially prepaied to take Sir Charles Fergusson ashoie when he visited the island, and since then reserved for the transport of distinguished visitors, under which heading wc came. / - ' Shooting the Reef. Two minutes in a canoe, with only a slight swell running, reassures the most timid traveller till the reef drawk near, and then bronzed cheeks grow pale. “If you get the wind up, don t let them see it,” Dr. Ellison had warned us. •‘lf they do, they might put a bit of spray aboard just for fun.” . As we hung off the reef, waiting for the right wave, we remembered the advit* and found it hard to live up to it. Bach wave broke in a smother just in front of us, and, as it fell back, showed a great hollow of sea in front of our bow and a steep, hard, coral wall at the other side of it. Half a dozen times this happened ; ’ then there was a cry of “Tau, tau, tau from all the men, they dug their paddles in, powerful stroke after powerful stroke, the canoe perched on top of a wave, snot forward, and the boiling reef was behind us. No one seemed to be sorry. The mails had preceded us, and as we climbed up the first of the terraces that make Up this island those of the population who were not surrounding us and laughing and joking were crowded round the post office, waiting for their letters. While a native policeman, in uniform, kept the most eager from getting in the way of the.others. _ ' The resident agent, Mr. J. McGruther, who is also . the schoolteacher, and his wife, who is the nurse and used to’ teach school, too, took us to their house and gave us orange juice, then showed us the way to the top of the makatea, or coral upthrust, that forms a sort of wall right round the island. Behind the back garden of the McGruthers’ house rise two terraces, carefully trimmed from the natural banks, and on top of the second is a bouse, built native style, that is a model for any Mangaian builder, every part of it as good as could be made by the co-operative work of the islanders to show their regard for Mr. and Mrs. McGruther. ' There in the cool, looking out past the shrubs and trees in the foreground, over a‘ brilliant--- flamboyant tree to the-sea,-we had our lunch, and there we rested after looking round the island. Above this upper terrace again is the top of the makatea, at this part about half a mile wide. We walked through the native villages, all carefully kept and clean, down pleasant, shhded paths, to the spot where the makatea, once a coral reef at sea level, falls away into a huge basin. A Fertile Basin. Two or three hundred feet below was as thickly covered an area of land as you would see wherever you went. The basin stretched for two or three miles till it rose again in bare hills that might have been transplanted from New Zealand, to the makatea on the other side, and all over the floor there seemed to be no space for one more plant. The effect of the coconut palms, §een from above and slightly to one side, so that only their beads were visible, was of the greatest profusion, their great leaves hiding everything. But under them, in carefully-tilled gardens, grow most of the taro, yams, and arrowroot of Mangaia. The huge circular basin looked a? if it had been taken straight from a book of adventure —the sight the young explorers saw after they had struggled from the shipwreck to the top of the bill. Tbeie was enough food there for an army, and because of its protecting walls it bad escaped the main force of the hurricane. Help for Other Islands. When we returned to the outside of the island the captain had come ashore, and the islanders were gathering routia the cargo vessel, waiting for ull their visitors to assemble. Inside tire shed great ibunebes of bananas bung from every rafter, while the floor was piled with bundles of arrowroot, and with plaited yandaiius, baskets of oranges, taro, and yams which the people of Mangaia were giving to the islands which bad suffered more from the hurricane. Altogether there was 25 tons of this gift food —evidence that the Polynesian can be a hard worker as well as a generous giver, for all this ‘had been hurriedly collected within a day of the ship’s arrival. The big cargo shed was crowded with native youngsters, and women sitting on the floor, men and women standing, all of them watching the officers of the Matai, and the passengers, as they filed in. The spokesman was a native policeman, a man of standing, but not an ariki. First he prayed, thanking God that the Matai had been sent to relieve the damaged islands. Then he addressed the visitors, thanking each for bis share in the expedition, and pointing to a special pile of oranges which he explained were for the crew, to show that Mangaia appreciated their work. New Zealand, the Motherland. "As soon as New Zealand heard that the Cook Islands were in trouble, that great damage had been done, and that some of the people badly needed food, the Island Council met. and said ‘We must help them. Let us send the Matai,’ ” declared Mr. S. J. Smith, Secretary of the New Zealand Cook Islands Department. And the people cheered him as if he had been announcing a great gift to them. Everywhere the arrival of help from New Zealand, often badly needed, provoked the same enthusiasm; the islanders felt that their Mother Country had remembered them in their extremity. To us. it seemed most important that they should feel that. The cruise of the Matai did New Zealand incalculable good in the eyes of the Cook peoples, and the memory of it will remain with them for yen rs. . ‘‘lf the Government hadn t sent the Matai the people would have regarded it as a breach of trust,” a man who knows the islands well told us. They might just as well have handed the Cooks over-to the French or Japanese right away.” It did not seem an under-state-ment. just as it did not seem possible to understate the good done by the send ing of the vessel.