ISLAND FOR TWO

Hawera Star, Volume L, 26 April 1930, Page 9

ISLAND FOR TWO

TT'ARL RUTTER, 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 nva.dc 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, writes the Berlin correspondent of the “Daily Mail,” 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 Jlilde Kocrwin, left Hamburg last June and landed u,t Guayaquil, the chief port of Ecuador, in October. There they bought a boat and set sail for the distant island where they iwere 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

Modern Grusoes

living in a Berlin lodging, lie wore no clothes but eoar.se- linen, which he stitched together himself, and when at home he usually wore nothing; He lived on fruit and uncooked corn and vegetables. His twife; poor women, 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 lie did himself. She was happily married, but in his, hands she changed her view -of life completely. The reading of an old book of travel determined Ritter to go to -Charles Dar. win 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.