MADAGASCAR’S FIRST DOCK

Taranaki Daily News, 28 April 1934, Page 9 (Supplement)

MADAGASCAR’S FIRST DOCK

NO MORE HARD LANDINGS SOME GOOD FROM WAR DEBTS Madagascar’s first dock will soon be ready, and no longer will every passenger and every bit of cargo have to be landed in a small boat. The island was macle a French colony after the War of Occupation in 1895. In spite of a great deal of interior development no docks have ever before been constructed, so that every bit of the island's shipping has had to be done by lighters serving the liners anchored outside the various ports. Tamatave has the honour of this first dock. She has a natural harbour protected by coral reefs where the largest liners may anchor, and now they will be able to dock alongside the new quay. HAZARDOUS AND DIFFICULT WORK The work of construction was begun after the war and, as part of France's reparation demands, was at first carried out by Germans with German machinery and personnel. Since reparations have ceased, however, a joint FrenchGerman Board has completed the work. Some 200 million francs have already been spent, and it is estimated that another 50 millions will be needed. The work has been hazardous and difficult from the first. Thousands of tons of stone were 'brought from the interior and converted into great 60-ton blocks of aement, and these had to be put into position in the teeth of gigantic waves beating up from the Antarctic. Tamatave is the eastern gateway to this great island off South-East Africa, and it is rapidly being modernised. From it run 200 miles of railway line up through a double belt of tropical forest to the capital, Antananarivo, in the highlands of the interior. To this port came the first missionaries in 1818, two Welshmen, Jones and Bevan, with their wives and children. Within a few weeks the whole party was stricken with sickness, and only David Jones remained alive to carry single-handed the Gospel to the pagan tribes of the interior. The others were buried in the sandy shore of the palm-fringed bay. DUST OF EARLY PIONEERS . Nearly a century later the French authorities, in making town improvements, were forced to remove their graves, together with those of many European soldiers, traders, native criminals, and slaves. The gathered remains were all reburied in a common grave, and so the dust of these early pioneers,, was mingled with that of the people for whom they gave their lives. To-day, near the very place where they were buried, is rising a Protestant church to their memory, the previous one having been razed to £he ground in the terrible cyclone of 1927, when the whole town was wrecked. MEET KING RICHARD I. Wc now meet one of the most courageous of all the English monarchs, although by no means the best king. Richard I. was well-named “Coeur de Lion,” for he fought very bravely in several of the Crusades which were all the rage at the time. He was the son of Henry IL, and was a very tall man, 6ft. 2ins. in height, and well built. As a matter of fact, he was shapely rather than massive, for his head was small and his body slim for a man of his height. You should see Richard in your mind’s eye as a really imposing figure, with fair complexion, yellow hair inclined to red, and fine, fierce sparkling blue eyes. Unfortunately, Richard was so taken up with fighting that he spent only eight months of his 10 years’ reign in his country, and he sold so many offices and grants of crown land that he upset the whole scheme of things in the new and rapidly developing England. It is said that Richard swore “he would have sold the city of London itself if he could have found a bidder.” His days were ended at the siege of Chalus in 1199, when the lionhearted king was foolish enough to expose himself without armour. His body was buried at the feet of his father in the Abbey Church of Fontevraud in Normandy. LARS PORSENA’S PEOPLE. LIGHT ON RIDDLE OF HISTORY. Once again we are told that the mystery of Etruria and the Etruscans is about to be disclosed. In the British Museum the visitor may see tombs and vases, paintings, carvings, and gold ornaments of this wonderful people who were wiped out of Italy by the Romans, and who for more than 2000 years are almost as if they had never been. Almost, but not quite. In Tuscany, between Perugia and Siena, are the remains of their ancient civilisation. Macaulay, in his Lays of Ancient Rome, speaks of their wars with the Romans. Lars Pdrsena belonged to them. The Roman historians are .themselves strangely silent about them. KEY TO THE ETRUSCAN LANGUAGE Yet they were a great artistic and cultured beyond doubt, and in the 19th century the archaeologists interested in them declared that they were a greater race than the Romans and the equals or the superiors of the Greeks. Under later inquiry their importance rather dwindled, and the most their advocates would claim for them was that they were most likely offshoots of the Greek or Hellenic peoples. All these disputed questions have remained unanswered because, though Etruscan tombs and monuments are covered with inscriptions, nobody has yet I een able, to read them. It is now declared by Dr. Francisco Pironti of Perugia that he has found the key to the Etruscan language by connecting it with the most ancient Greek, while allowing for the alteration of the Greek by changes in pronunciation after those who brought it with them had settled in Italy. In short, Etruscan was ancient phonetic Greek. If this is right mysteries as interesting as they are ancient are about to be revealed, but the learned doctor has a hard task before him in convincing critics who in the last sixty years have heard many such claims. DIAMONDS IN THE FIRE A RING FOUND IN TIME Coal has been called black diamonds often enough, -but that did not make Mrs Taylor, of Lancaster (Enland); any less amazed when she poked her fire the other day and found diamonds in it—real diamonds set in a platinum ring. She snatched it out and reported her find to the police, who tracked down the owner, a young woman who was to be married the next day. The ring was her engagement-ring and it had slipped off her finger in the street some weeks ago. Thinking it might have rolled down a grid, her fiance searched the cellar of one house, but it was among Mis Taylor’s coal next door that it was reposing. And that is how the missing ring was back on the young woman’s finger by the time a gold ring was also slipped on.

LONG AGO STORIES. JOHN LEARNS A SECRET. The little farm stood in the middle of a great desolate stretch of moor. John saw the farmer at work in the yard, and he went boldly in and asked for a job. He was a strong boy of fourteen, who had run away from the workhouse to this lonely place. “Sixpence a week,” said the farmer, looking at the boy keenly, “and you can sleep in the stable.” • Sixpence a week, food, and a warm bed of hay! John felt that his fortune was made. But he was surprised when he found he had very little work to do. The farmer allowed most of his fields to run to weeds, and only kept sufficient pigs to salt down for himself, yet he appeared to have as much money as he wanted. One moonlight night, the farmer awoke John and told him to get the horse and cart ready. Then they set out across the moor, with the farmer’s wife sitting behind. When they reached a lonely place, they all set to and filled the cart with lumps of shiny clay the refuse thrown out of an old mine many years’ before. John worked till he nearly dropped, and the next day he broke up the clay and packed it in wooden boxes which the farmer took down to the coast. After that John knew what to expect on moonlight nights, and at last he ask-

ed the farmer why they worked so hard to cleai’ away a lot of old refuse. “I am under a curse,” was the gruff reply, “I’ve got to fill a big hole on the coast, and when that’s done I’ll be free of the work.” John believed this story for nearly a year. But when he discovered that the boxes were shipped to Germany, he was puzzled. Then one day the Lord of the Manor came riding up to the farm in a great, state of excitement, and asked the.farmer what he did with the refuse he col-’ lected on moonlight nights. The man replied that he used it on his fields. But. the Lord of the Manor put a stop to those moonlight excursions, so the farmer dismissed John and went off somewhere in the night John wandered miserably across the moor till he came to the old mine, and there he saw a gentlman examining a lump of clay, or spar as the miners called the rubbish they threw out. “If I only knew!” murmured the man, “My lad’, do I hold a great secret in my hand?” “Well, for months I’ve been collecting it, and packing it, and sending it to Germany,” replied John. • The man danced, then shouted, then sat down and laughed. “My name is Josiah Wedgwood,” he said, “I make crockery-ware, and for years I’ve been wondering how certain German porcelain was made. This refuse is probably worth its weight in gold!” “Oh, sir, teach me to use it,” pleaded John. Mr. Wedgwood tick John into his factory. And the dinner services which John eventually made from what he had thought to be refuse are worth more money to-day than John earned in a year. How he loved making them! He was a skilled potter, and earned a very good living. MEET KING JOHN. If I could, I would miss out King John, but it seems silly to break the line of rulers we are meeting just because John happens to have been “the most vicious, the most profane, the most tyrannical, the most false, the most short-sighted and the most unscrupulous” of all English monarchs. We must take the bad with the good, mustn’t we? Therefore I will introduce you to his Majesty, King John of England. At the age of 50, he was a man with a strong compact figure, long and flowing curled hair of a red ’ish colour now going grey, and a small beard. He had wide cheek-bones, his features were hard, and his expression was well—shall we say miserable? In early youth he had been fairly good-looking, but years of evil-living left their mark upon his face and added to the size of his figure. - John was 33 years of age when he “stole” the throne from poor Arthurthen 13 years old—and he died just before his 51st birthday at Newark and was buried in Worcester Cathedral. Besides being a cruel and altogether bad king, he was also the most extravagant prince in the world at that time, and the fact that his baggage was lost in the Wash meant much more than it might have done had he been a man who dressed less elaborately. His greatest crime, of course, was ordering the murder o‘f poor Arthur—but I think we’ve said enough about King John, don’t you? BALKAN PEACE PACT. FOUR NATIONS LINKED TOGETHER. Of the six nations of the Balkan Peninsula, four have concluded a Pact of Peace. It was signed at Athens amid great popular rejoicings. The four countries are Rumania, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Greece, and the pact binds the four, parties to consult with each other on all political questions affecting joint interests. More important still, they guarantee mutually the security of all their Balkan frontiers. It is because of this guarantee that the other two Balkan States, Bulgaria and Albania, refuse to join in the pact. Bulgaria, because she joined with Germany in the war, was compelled to sign the Treaty of Neuilly, and territory was taken from her and given to Rumania and Yugo-Slavia. Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, was actually placed within the range of Yugo-Slavian guns on the new frontier. There are large Bulgarian populations in the lands taken by Rumania and Yugo-Slavia. Against these arrangements Bulgaria has never ceased to protest,. and she has been supported by Italy, whose statesmen argue that a real and enduring Balkan peace cannot be made while Bulgaria has just cause for complaint. Albania, protected by Italy from absorption by Yugo-Slavia, takes the same view. A Balkan Pact which omits Bulgaria cannot be called satisfactory.