A FISHING PARADISE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22716, 31 October 1935, Page 14

A FISHING PARADISE

Three hundred and sixty-five miles westward of Valparaiso, out in the lonely reaches of the Pacific, lies one of the least known and yet most notable islands in the world —Juan Fernandez Land or the Island of Robinson Crusoe. romantic and beautiful is.this island, climbing 3000 ft up from the sea and clad with ferns, forests* and tumbling streams designed by Nature's own hand. Ir the bad old days any ship that called here for food and water was supposed to leave behind some peace-offering for future comers. These gifts consisted of anything from a packet of vegetable seeds to a stray and protesting cat, c st tshore from a sinking ship, so that Robinson Crusoe Island to-day is a "museum of the past, full of every kind of animal, plant, and tree life living together and trying hard to forget their lawless and promiscuous origins (writes "Colonel P. T. Etherton in the Sunday Express). Robinson Crusoe Island is a paradise for all kinds of fishing, a place where the tallest story, can come true. Amber jacks run up to a hundred pounds in weight; there are violet snails, pampanitoes, ardently athletic flying fish, and" a. hundred phosphorescent examples of lupine life that fill the sea with tiny beacons of electric light and the night with wonder. Humming birds dart ihrough the 40 miles of woods, where ajs no roads or paths; 300 inhabitants fish oway their lives happily, catching 100,000 lobsters a year on *his island that commemorates for ever the story of a castaway, a black man, and a goat.