CONTROL OF RAROTONGA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22197, 26 August 1935, Page 13

CONTROL OF RAROTONGA

NEW ZEALAND'S POLICY AMERICAN VISITOR IMPRESSED "I think the policy of New Zealand in Parotonga is much better than that of the United States in Hawaii," said Mr. C. Hills, a planter, of Kauai Island, who is visiting Christchurch in the course of a holiday tour. "Your Government is doing well in encouraging the natives in their arts and their own ways of life, and in keeping out Ghinesu and other foreign elements. The hurricanes do serious damage. We saw signs of the last one /in "the huge, uprooted trees that lay all round the beaches." Mr. Hills visited Raratonga on his way to New Zealand. " Kauai is the garden island of the Hawaii group," said Mr. Hills. "It lies a hundred miles north of Honolulu ami has an area of 540 square miles. We have a varied climate, with summer heat 011 the seashore and nice cool temperatures up the mountain slopes, which rise 3000 ft." There was a population of 315,000 persons, mostly Japanese and Filipinos who had been imported to work in the sugar fields, he said. Kauai produced 200,000 tons ot sugar a year and 1,000,000 cases of pineapples. Mr. Hills is a coconut planter, shipping the nuts to California, unhusked, for human consumption. It was impossible to make copra production pay, he stated. "We all think it's a mistake, said Mr. Hills, when asked what was the attitude of Americans in Hawaii to the United States relinquishing its sovereignty over the Philippines. "1 suppose the Democrat Party had to make some change in administration, and there you are." . . After a week's travel in the South Island, including a visit to the Westland glaciers, Mr. Hills will go to Napier and Rotorua. Ho is anxious to make aeroplane flights over the countrv, maintaining that one gets a much better idea of its nature by seeing it from above.