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Marlborough Express, Volume XXXII, Issue 216, 5 October 1897, Page 2

The trade returns of the tbadb of thb Cook Islands show that the islands. total exports for 1896 were a hundred pounds less than m 1893, and £1200 less than m 1895. The aotual export of produce from the islands only oame to £15,486, aB against £19,080 m the previous year. This deoreaeo was due to the exceptionally dry Beason affecting the copra and coffee export to the extent of nearly £4000. Coffee, oopra, oranges, and limejqice are likely to continue, says Mr Moae, the British Resident, to be the staple produots of the islands; and, m referring to the probability o! the Union Company offering inoreased facilities for sending orangeß and other fruit from Baratonga to the southern ports of New Zealand, he remarks :— " Anything that tends to widen the orange market will be of great advantage to Baratonga and the other Cook Islands ; their power of producing oranges of the best quality will always be one of the safest resouroes. At present many hundreds of thousands rot yearly, m the absence of a sufficiently extensive market." The returns show that the current of trade is being gradually diverted to this colony. Last year, of the total exports, £16,820, nearly all— £ls,297— came to New Zealand, while trade with Tahiti and San Francieoo was only about a quarter of what it was three years before. Of the import?, New Zealand's share came to £17,000 odd out of a total of £23,000. Three years before, half the total imports (amounting then to £19,000) oame from plaoes outside New Zealand. Now we supply three-quarters of the whole amount, and the proportion has increased so steadily of late years aB to warrant the belief that, before long, New Zealand will oapture the entire trade.