AN UNCROWNED KING

Evening Star, Issue 14513, 3 November 1910, Page 3

AN UNCROWNED KING

The death occurred at Yentnor (Isle of Wight) during the first week of July of that romrakable character Mr George CluniesRoss. Officially he was known to the Colonial Office as " Superintendent of the Cocos and Keeling Islands”; as a matter of fact, he was proprietor and practically king of the coral group which lies in the Indian Ocean 700 miles south-west of Sumatra and over 500 miles away from its nearest neighbor, Christmas Island. The connection of the Ross family with these remote islands, which are under British protection, and are situated about 700 miles trom Java, forms a romance of adventure which might have been taken from a chapter by Stevenson. There for more than eighty years the Clanies-Boss family have lived and ruled among a population which has never numbered more than a few hundred, including a score of Europeans. The islands were discovered in 1609, but their history begins with the landing there, in . 1825, of John Ciunies-Ross, the grandfather of George, who found them uninhabited. The Ross family took refuge in tho Shetland Islands after tho Jacobite trouble of 1715, and there John Clunics-Ross was born. He had an adventurous seafaring life for some years, in the course of which ho fell in with Alexander Hare, the eccentric son of a wealthy London watchmaker, whose dream it was to live the life of an Oriental monarch. With Hare, Ross determined to make his homo in the Cocos Islands. Tho former brought with him his harem; the latter lis family. The entire company numbered 175. There were twenty whites, the vest being natives of Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, Java, Bal, Sumbawa, Timor, New Guinea, India, China, and Zululand. It was a motley assemblage, composed mainly of tho ladies of Hare's harem and the crews of tho leaders’ vessels.

The motives of Ihe two were very different. Hare's one desire was to find a secluded portion of the globe where there were no creditors and no critics of his mode of life. Clunies-Ross had a commercial aim in view, but, his original scheme failing, he turned his attention to the cocoa palms of the islands and their many useful products. A thriving industry was soon set on foot, and prosperity attended the settlers in spite of constant quarrels between the rival chiefs. Haro, who treated his people as slaves, soon found his faction diminshod by desertions to Ross’s camp. Finally he retired to die in Singapore. Ross then laid claim to the whole group, which he ruled for twentyseven years, dying in 1854. His son, John George, succeeded his father as “ King of the Cocos,” and in his time the islands were first proclaimed British territory. He married a Malay woman, who boro him nine children, six of the u boys, the eldest of whom was George. He and his brothers were educated in Scotland, George becoming mi engineer. He was recalled to Cocos in 1862 to assist his father in re-establishing the industries of the islands after they had been devastated by a cyclone. George, like his father, married a Malay woman, and in 1871 succeeded his father. He proved himself a most capable ruler and benevolent despot, and under his regime his subjects flourished greatly, and: great wealth accrued to his family, in spite of set-backs from cyclones and plagues of rats and cats. As to the rats—thereby hangs a story. Until a few years ago not a rat was seen in Cocos. But a ship was wrecked off the islands, and the rats swam ashore. They increased at such a rate that they became a nuisance, and caused a tremendous loss by spoiling the buds of the cocoanut. The King of the Cocos Islands endeavored to exterminate the rodents by importing cats. But the cats did not do their work at all. The trouble of catching the rats was apparently too much for them, and, finding n delicious shellfish on the shores which they liked much better, they within a short time became so wild and numerous that they were as great a nuisance as the rats. The Cocos Islands are a veritable Utopia. Money is unknown, and ihe parchment notes of George Clnnies-Ross remain the sole medium of exchange. Moreover, in spite of tho absence of police and soldiery, perfect order prevails, and crime is a rare thing. Sydney Clunies-Ross, the eldest son of the late “Superintendent," succeeds his father in control of tho islands.—London correspondent.