LONELY ISLAND.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2488, 5 July 1909, Page 8

LONELY ISLAND.

(I3y a Correspondent in the London Daily Chronicle.) Just now, on a tiny island in the faraway Pacific Ocean, a little community ■anxiously watches day by day the eastern horizon; and the first' man to announce the appearance on the ocean’s - distant threshold of a squat little cruiser will be for days the proudest man in Pitcairn For the members of this island community know that that cruiser will bring their mail, which arrives once in a year or two. Their island is out of the track of the ships of the civilised world; the rim of the horizon is ever clear save, perhaps, when some drunken windjammer wanders from the “road” and appears like a ghost-ship in the evening half-light, passing by to the bustling centres the other side of the Horn; or when there creeps up tliis cruiser, sent by the British Dover nment to “show the Hag” and to see that all is well with the exiles in this lonesome corner of the sea wilderness, “the world forgetting, by the world forgot.” They are hoping that the British Postmaster will call them to mind soon, and they are not to bo disappointed ; for it is announced that H.M.S. Flora will shortly proceed to Pitcairn Island from Ooquimbo, (Jhile, and that letters and printed matter for the island leave England this month. Even in tliis country, where we receive letters as often as wo feed, there is still a joyous sensation in finding a letter awaiting us, if it be of the right sort. What then must be the delight of the Pitcairners when the mail arrives? It was my good fortune to go aboard H.M.S. Flora when she returned to the China station after her last visit to the romantic waters of the Southern Pacific. At no place during their 26,000 mile cruise had the otiicers and men had a warmer welcome than at Pitcairn Island. They brought back to our humdrum world strange tales of its lonely people. The otiicers told men oi white men they •had met who had no idea whether the Tories or the Liberals were controlling the Empire’s destinies from Westminster; who were, in fact, not aware that Russia and Japan were at war, and who had to have explained to them that "E.R.” on the mailbags meant that the great Vic toria was really no more. Perhaps, to give a better understanding of the Pitcairners, one ought to present, the main outlines of their history. Mon.than a century ago the good ship Bounty (Captain Bligh) was in the waters of the' Southern Pacific when the crew mutinied, and ten of them, led by one Fletcher Christian (subsequently murdered by natives), made for the island of Pitcairn. This was in the year 1790. With them the mutineers took six native men and eleven women from Tahiti as servants and wives. Once on the solitary island they thought they were safe from the consequences of their action; that thly would never be discovered. For twenty-four years that was so. Then one day, when the mutiny lingered but faintly in the world’s memory, and Christian and his fellows had been reckoned as dead, a ship chanced to put in at Pitcairn for shelter. On landing, the captain was astonished to be addressed in English by men who were obviously of European origin. Then out came the whole story. Since then the exiles have had many visits, and received many kindnesses, from “ships that passed,” and through ail these years, although the original colonists are long since dead, their descendants preserve the English tongue, and, as far as is possible in view of their isolation from the centres of fashion, hold to European modes of dress. The officers of the Flora found their hosts wondrous content with their lot. Not once did they hoar a desire to quit the shores of the island for the life of the great world beyond. In their own simple way the Pitcairners were prospering; they had none of the warped and' frenzied ambitions of crowded cities; no desire for wealth or position. Happy, happy people! They had an "oldest resident,” of whom they were proud. He was a cheery old soul of 87, and he claimed to he the grandson of their pioneer, Fletcher Christian. Other families carried remembrance of the founders of their “race” in the names fhey Itore Young, Christian, M'Coy. Intermarriage with the Tahitians had, of course, modified, but not subjugated, the Western features of the people. They were living about as near the simple life as the most thorough-going Ctopnan could desire. They existed comfortably on the products of the soil, and. in short, enjoyed all the advantages of the free life of those whom we are pleased to call the uncivilised, and at the same time suite red none of the disadvantages; they enjoyed the consequences of their civilisation, and suffered none of its ills. 'Their measure of rnqrtal happiness was, indeed, greater than that of us of the bustling world. They had no newspapers to keep pace with; no spirit-breaking tele phones; no letters with bills every morning; no scramble to catch the train to the city; no problems of poverty or housing of the people; no worry about the supremacy of the licet or the income-tax man; none, in fact, of the harsher features of the struggle for existence. . Their simplicity and qnaintness were reflected in their laws. One must not kill a. cat, for instance, because the island was pestered by rats. Saturday was the Sabbath, or "taboo” day. No work was then to be done, and the men of the Flora found that this, and ail other laws, were carried out both in letter and spirit. There was found to be an effective sys tern of education, and no quarrels about sectarianism or education Bills. iMost of the islanders could not conjure up a mental picture of a railway train. . Their ancestors had been unable to describe such inventions, as they had left England long before Stephenson’s “Rocket” puffed its way between Liverpool and Man Chester. It should be added that the Flora, in ( her cruise, will doubtless call at severa I < other edge-of-the-planot outposts of the , Pacific. From Coquimbo site will dodge ( first on one side, then the other, of the ( Tropic of Capricorn, calling probably, as j well as at Pitcairn, at lovely Tahiti, in i the Society Islands, Easter Island, Fiji , and, perchance, Samoa, beloved of'] “R.L.S.” 1 Easter Island will call for first atten- ) lion. The place is so-called because it j was discovered on Easter Sunday, 1721, ) by a Dutch Admiral. When the Flora 6 hist called there her crew met with a < native woman, who claimed to be over t 135 years of age—so that, despite despotic t rule and voluptuous customs, there must t he something healthy in the environment, t This charming old person told the officers I that she remembered Captain Cook once c [Hitting in at Easter Island when he ran } short of water! ■ li . i • n

11 'lt is believed that Israel Zangwill and 1 lis Jewish territorial -organisation have c it last found a territory suitable for “ lewish autonomous colonisation. Deft- i lite opinion, however, must await publi;ation of the report of an expedition a hrough Cyrenaica conducted by Dr Ore- a rory, Professor of Geology at Glasgow S( Jniversity. Though so near Egypt little 01 las been known of Cyrenaica in modern P imcs, Europeans having been more or Ci ess excluded. But the recent expedition ' ras especially fayored by Redjeb Pasha, ite Governor-Genera] of Tripoli. It contitutes a wide peninsula, and so far as nown is well wooded and watered and s * he climate is excellent. Many ruins of a rest past exist and It must have had 1 a r£ irge population in Trajan’s time, for the pi ows of Cyrenaica, in his reign, are w redited with the slaughter of 200,000 tc Romans and Greeks, 1 M