TAHITI

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4567, 10 November 1937, Page 8

TAHITI

THE ISLE OF ENCHANTMENT. The Ville d'Amiens ploughed her way across the Pacific nearing Tahiti. The five members of our party were on deck. Four of us were experiencing the sensation one has when approaching for the first time some great work of art, or when about to hear some supreme musical composition. -■- . Our imaginations had been stirred

by the descriptions given of the Delectable Isle, by travellers from Captain Cook onward, and now the fifth member of our company—an Italian journalist with a rare genius for description, who had spent some days in the island on a previous voyage, painted such a picture as left us counting the hours. Some of us then began to reason that to spend a mere 24 hours out of a lifetime in exploring one of nature's richest treasures would be not only a reflection upon our own sense of values, but would display a lamentable lack of appreciation of the Creator's work. Our Italian friend had a date he would not break with a dear old mother in the mountains of Italy. Bob and Eileen were Crusaders bound for Spain, he to fight, she to nurse, and nothing would turn them from what they deemed the path of duty. W. and S. toyed with the idea, but decided to wait and see. Next morning the steward aroused us just as dawn was breaking with the news that Tahiti was in bight. The stars were faintly visible and we could just see the form of Tahiti ahead, and the incredibly fantastic outline of Moorea etched upon the sky looking as unsubstantial as the side view of a theatre scene. In a few moments the rising sun made it all three dimensional. It seemed as if some invisible lightning artist was dipping a giant brush with prodigal abandonment into the gorgeous colours of the tropics. Splashing the clouds, capping the heights of Moorea, and then with mighty strokes filling in its outline with mountain ranges as rugged, and as impressive as those of Switzerland. Below the artist dipped in softer colours and depicted good castles with crenulated battlements—for so they appeared to us—perched on inaccessible heights, hills and valleys sloping to the shores, clothed with trees in which the palm predominated with golden sand edged with creamy foam in the foreground. Fascinated by Moorea we had failed to observe —until called —the transfiguration of Tahiti. Its cloud capped peaks, lit up with scarlet and gold the lower stretches stepped with masses of Emerald green circles in places by the black of basaltic rocks. Lower still the individual beauty of a thousand palms set in other tropical growths could be seen sloping to the green and blue lagoon lying calm within the reef. So it was with all this glorious pageantry around us, with its reflected radiance making us a pathway truly celestial, we passed through the gates of paradise. W. whispered with a thrill in his voice, "We'll stay." I answered, ."We The gates of Paradise in this case was the river Paa, which discharges into the sea through a break in the reef. It was not long before we were being hauled sideways on to the wharf. I must confess that the white clad officials lined up to meet the boat did not interest us, nor ye the town of Papeete, capital of the islands. This was not the Tahiti we wished to see, and as soon as possible we were speeding out into the real Tahiti — the Tahiti of Captain Cook, of Herman Melville, Robert Louis" Stevenson, .Paul Gauguin and others. Then came still evening on, and

twilight grey Had in her sober livery all things clad. Darkness fell with a suddenness that almost startled visitors from temperate zones. The stars shone also with such a rare brilliance as to make another experience for us southerners. One star of exceptional glory appeared to be impaled on Moorea's highest peak, and split a lane of molten platinum over the waters beneath. We were yet to gaze on another vision glorious, for over the rim of the ocean a buttercup moon rode out into a blue velvet sky, and threw an ethereal radiance over wave, palm and flower

I thought again of Milton and his description—

New glowed the firmament with living sapphires; Hesperus, that led the starry host, rode brightest, Until the moon, rising in clouded liajesty, At length apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver maritle threw.

Suddenly into the sea of silver glided a canoe with three native girls, two paddling and singing; one standing upright in the centre holding a guitar, with which she accompanied the singers—not the strident strumming we so often heard, but the notes hardly definable—rather a mist of music floating about the air. They passed on into the shadows of the trees, and the music faded. Turning to W., I said, "And the evening and the morning were the first day." Early next morning, to make sure that.we had not been dreaming, we roamed further afield, and then we fully realised what all travellers admit—the poverty of language to adequately picture the supreme expression of natural beauty called Tahiti. We came very definitely to the conclusion that such a place should be proclaimed an international sanctuary of Nature. It seems as if this was intended, for she has no mineral resources, no coal or oil. Even if such things were in existence to deface her loveliness with smoking chimneys and grim derricks —gibbbets for the slaying of beauty—to turn loose the devouring dredge and the sawmill would be to me a sacrilegious crime more hineous than the defiling of a temple.