MANGAIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22545, 12 April 1935, Page 5

MANGAIA

A PARADISE OF THE PACIFIC INTRODUCTION TO CANOES (From a Special Correspondent.) IV. The way of the journalist who travels in the Pacific is hard. With fresh eyes he sees what thousands of others have seen before him; surprised, he realises that the old, old stories about the glamour of the tropics, the beauty of coral islands, the extravagant blueness of the sea, the charm of the people, arc all true, though the stories are poor and faded beside the reality. The challenge

has to be accepted. Though he feels that only c-m thing is worth doing, and that is to stay always on an island and to bring the art of loafing to a new height of perfection, he drives himself to his typewriter—and then finds that all the words have been used. Whoever first called some dot in the ocean an island paradise said the last word about Mangaia, the first island the Matai reached on her way from Rarotonga round the lower group. The shouts and laughs of natives woke us up that morning, and we jumped to portholes to see them alongside the ship in their long outrigger canoes, joking with the sailors- on deck. In the background was their island, much higher than most of its size, protected by a high reef which can be negotiated only by canoes. The native canoe looks an inadequate vessel for working cargo. Its length seems poor compensation for its extreme narrowness, and though the outrigger is solid it gives no great impression of stability. But with skilful handling,

which they get in Mangaia, the canoes can move cargo very fast. One of those alongside was singled out from the workaday craft by neat painting and by three seats set on the gunwales and with backs and sides carved from wood. This was the vice-regal barge, specially prepared to take Sir Charles Fergusson ashore when he visited the island, and since then reserved for the transport of distinguished visitors, under which heading we came. SHOOTING THE REEF Two minutes in a canoe, with only a slight swell running, reassures the most timid traveller till the reef draws near, and then bronzed cheeks grow pale. “If you get 'the wind up, don’t let them see it,” Dr Ellison had warned us. “If they do, they might put a bit of spray aboard just for fun.” As we hung off the reef, waiting for the right wave, we remembered the advice, and found it hard to live up to it. Each wave brol ; in a smother just in

front of us, and, as it. fell back, showed a great hollow of sea in front of our bow and a steep, hard, coral wall at the other side of it. Half a dozen times this happened; then there was a cry of “ tau, tau, tau ” from all the men, they dug their paddles in, powerful stroke after powerful stroke, the canoe perched on top of a wave, shot forward, and the boiling reef was behind us. No one seemed to be sorry. The mails had preceded us, and as we climbed up the first of the terraces that make up this island those of the population who were not surrounding us and laughing and joking were crowded round the post office, waiting for their letters, while a native policeman, in uniform, kept the most eager from getting in the way of the others. The resident agent, Mr J. W. M'Gruther, who is also the school teacher, and his. wife, who is the nurse and used to teach school, too, took us to their house and gave us orange juice, then showed us the way to the, top of the makatea, or coral upthrust, that forms

a sort of wall right round the island. Behind the back garden of the M'Gruther's house rise two terraces, carefully trimmed from the natural banks, and on top of tha second is a house, built native style, that is a model for any Mangaian builder, every part of it as good as could be made by the cooperative work of tlie islanders to show their regard for Mr and Mrs M'Gruther. There in the cool, looking out past the shrubs and trees in the foreground, over a brilliant flambuoyant tree to the sea, w£ had our lunch, and there we rested after looking round the island. Above this upper terrace again is the top of the makatea, at this part about half a mile wide. We walked through the native villages, all carefully kept and clean, down pleasant, shaded paths, to the spot where the makatea, once a coral reef at sea level, falls away into a huge basin. A FERTILE' BASIN Two or three hundred feet below was as thickly covered an area of land as

you would see wherever you went. The basin stretched for two or three miles till it rose again in bare hills that might have been transplanted from New Zealand, to the makatea on the other side, and .all over the floor there seemed to be no space for one more plant. The effect of the coconut palms, seen from above and slightly to one side, so that only their heads were visible, was of the greatest profusion, their great leaves hiding everything. _ But under them, in carefully-tilled gardens, grow most of' the taro, yams, and arrowroot of Mangaia. The huge circular basin looked as if it had been taken straight from a book of adventure—the sight the young explorers saw after they had struggled from the shipwreck to the top of the hill. There was enough food there for an army, and because of its protecting ■walls it had escaped the main force of the hurricane.