THE CAROLINE MASSACRE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 221, 30 December 1910, Page 5

THE CAROLINE MASSACRE

A VISITOR'S IMPRESSIONS. NATIVES HOSTILE TO THE GERMANS. Christehurch, Wednesday. "I was sure it would happen. It nearly happened when I was out there," so said Mr. W. H. Langdown to a Press reporter yesterday. Mr. Langdown was trading at Ponape, in the Caroline Islands, arid saw, enough then to convince him that an outbreak against the Germans might take place at any moment. He lfent some of his "boys" to a German officer to assist in dragging a gun to the top of, a cliff, the object of the gun being to overawe an obstinate trader. One of the natives was heard to say, as he worked: "The next time we move this gun we'll do it on our own account." The idea was to tumble it over the cliff and take it away by canoe. Mr. Langdown warned the officer, and precautions were taken. The natives were annoyed with him for "giving them away," but Mr. Langdown explained that he had done so for their own good. "I told them the German Emperor could send out enough soldiers to cover the whole of Ponape standing touching one another." This surprised them, but it apparently did not make a permanent impression.

The natives "had no time for the Germans," who are not good colonisers. Englishmen and Americans, on the other hand, get on well with the natives. The men in Mr. Langdown's part of Ponape told him he would be quite safe if they fought with the The Caroline natives are of Malay origin and are daring fighters. They gave Spain a good deal of trouble (the Islands were sold to Germany after the war with the United States), on one occasion killing every Spaniard on the island save one man, who swam off to a gunboat. The Spaniards then surrounded the main settlement on Ponape with a high wall. The; natives are expert stone-throwers, these missiles being almost as deadly as bullets at close ranges. When they take to the bush they are very formidable foes. Ponape is very mountainous, and the in-1 terior is covered with jungle so dense that a way has to be cut through it, and fighting in such country presents enormous difficulties.