IN SOUTHERN PACIFIC

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 12903, 2 July 1936, Page 8

IN SOUTHERN PACIFIC

WOMAN’S INTERESTING LIFE

NO FRESH MEAT FOR 20 YEARS

4 ‘NATIVES MARVELLOUS

FRIENDS.”

LONDON, May 23

A woman who for 20 years has been living, the only white woman, among natives on tho scattered coral atolls of the Southern Pacific has arrived in London—and is already packing her trunks to go to some more islands, the 94 tiny. Seychelles, i:i the Indian Ocean. She is tho wife of Mr Arthur F. Crimble, who has sjient his life as a district officer and administrator for the Colonial Office, and has just been appointed Governor of the Seychelles Mrs Crimble had her four babies in tho Gilbert Islands. Until they were five or six years old they spoke Gilbertese, and only that. She brought thin hero on a visit, and had to have them taught English. As a bride, Mrs Grimblc went out tc Ocean Island in 1914. A year later she was living in a coconut and panclauus hut on Tarawa, in the northern Gilberts, a crescent of coral and sand 50 miles from the nearest island, on which were only natives. “I was alone for months at a time,” she said. “At first by myself and then with the children, while my husband was away, visiting tho rest of the islands, in an open boat with a native crew. I wasn’t afraid of the islanders, but of tho big winds. The people arc the finest in the world, magnificent friends. “I. learned their language, their songs and. dances, their way of looking at life. I sjient all my spare time with tho mothers and babies. They wero good to mo when my babies were bora 000 miles away from anywhere, with only sea. and scattered islands around. Wc lived on fish, coconuts, pa ndanus. fruit,, chicken and eggs and canned goods. We had no vegetables, no potatoes, and for 20 years no fresh meat.”