MODERN CRUSOES

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 March 1930, Page 8

MODERN CRUSOES

LIFE ON DESERT ISLAND., Karl Ritter, a German doctor, dreamed—as many dream —of turning his back on civilisation and of living a primitive life away from the haunts of man. He has made his dream come true, and is living on a desert island, the Charles Darwin Island in the Galapagos group, 440 miles from the coast of Ecuador, with a woman companion. On this island the strange couple have been found by Mr Eugene MacDonald, the leader of an American expedition to the islands of the Pacific. Dr Ritter and his companion, Frau iTilde Koerwin, left Hamburg last June and landed at Guayaquil, the chief port of Ecuador, in October. There they bought a. boat and set sail for the distant island, where they were to live as lived our first parents in the Garden of Eden. Their plans had been carefully made.

Dr Ritter had accustomed himself to what is called the “simple life” while living in a Berlin lodging. He wore no clothes but coarse linen, which he stitched together himself, and when at home he usually wore nothing. He lived on fruit and uncooked corn and vegetables. His wife, poor woman, felt no call to abandon the comforts of civilisation and retired to a villa in Baden, where she lived with her husband’s parents. Then came into his life the other woman, Frau Koerwin. She suffered from nervous ailments, and Dr Ritter cured her by making her live as near nature as he did himself. She was happily married, but in his hands she changed her view of life completely. The reading of an old book of travels determined Ritter to go to Charles Darwin Island, and he spent many weeks in getting together the stores and scientific instruments for the expedition. There was only one thing of which ! he was afraid —toothache. He therefore had all his teeth taken out and got an artificial set in their place.