IN THE CARIBBEAN.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2627, 25 March 1912, Page 2

IN THE CARIBBEAN.

Percy K. Lowe has had an unusual experience, which he describes in "A Naturalist on Desert Islands," Mr Lowe is a member of the British Ornithologists Union, and spent six consecutive winters voyaging among the islands of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico in search of scientific material. The trips were made in the vacht of Sir Frederic Johnstone.

The curious thing about these desert islands is that although they are known geographically for purposes of navigation, they are politically and commercially off the map. They are lands primitive and for the most part uninhabited.

Here and there Air Lowe found a single family living in Robinson Crusoelike style on an island. On others he found fishermen making temporary homes during the fishing seasons, and on still others, notably the Caymans, he discovered a scanty population, the descendants of shipwrecked sailors. Besides giving much information of value to the naturalist, Mr, Lowe interests the general reader with descriptions of his wanderings through the wild and beautiful scenery of these bits of the unknown. In speaking of the zest for primitive lands as he experienced it on these islands, he says: "Their charm lav rather in their complete privacy and inaccessibility, in the sense of 'exploration' that one experienced while on them ; in the feeling that they belonged to no one but the birds and animals upon them; that as far as anyone else was concerned one could go on them where one liked, and how one liked. One felt constantly inclined to thank God that they were so commercially insignificant and generally worthless that man had not swooped down to 'improve' them out of all recognition. "One of them, at least, is a little playground where grown-up people could go 'bird nesting,' and feel young again; where one could play at 'desert islands' among the coral reefs, lagoons and shady groves of cocoanut, thateh palms and satinwood trees; where one, could fish or bathe the whole day long; where one eould forget the hurly-burly, the worries, and petty jealousies of the world and be thankful that there was still left at least one Httle Eden where one could be happy with simple things."