ROMANTIC STORY OF THE PACIFIC

Evening Star, Issue 20364, 21 December 1929, Page 20

ROMANTIC STORY OF THE PACIFIC

SWEDISH SAILOR WHO BECAME A KIHG A letter to Sweden from the island of Tabor, in the Pacific, tells a wonderful adventure of the king of the Polynesia tribe, who is a Swede by birth, and now wants to resign in order to settle down in his homo country. Karl Pettersson. as his name is, was a sailor on a ship which, thirty years ago, capsized not far off the coast of New Guinea (says the Stockholm correspondent of the * Observer Pettersson wak the only survivor, and succeeded in reaching a small Pacific island, where he was at once surrounded by a tribe.of cannibals. During the preparation of the feast; the daughter of the tribal king fell in love with the prisoner, who was thus saved from

a cruel fate, and she actually persuaded her father to marry her to Pettersson, who, after the death of the native king, became the ruler of the island. Being a clear-sighted man King Pettersson realised the commercial value of the island’s natural resources and brought prosperity to the huts of his subjects. His brown wife having died some twenty years ago, King Pettersson travelled to Sweden and married there one Miss Simpson, of Gevle, who accompanied her royal husband to Tabor and became as popular as the king. Being now sixty-five years of age. King Pettersson has decideddo abdicate and to return to bis native city of Gothenburg. The succession of the Tabor throne is secured, but his subjects are disconsolate at the decision of their ruler.