In Papeete.

Wairarapa Age, 15 March 1929, Page 2

In Papeete.

Off TAHITI, Society Islands. Just before the bugle sounded the call to breakfast this morning, Sonya came running into the cabin, shouting, “We’ve sighted it! We’ve sighted it!” I sat up in my berth, yawning. ‘‘What’s this we’vci sighted ” I asked. “Why, Tahiti, sleepyhead!” she cried. “I went for a turn on deck, and just as I came round to the port side I looked up, and. there it was looming up in front of me, all jagged and craggy against the sky. Do hurry and [come up. It’s too beautiful!” When I joined Sonya a few minute's later, I found all the passengers lined along the promenade deck forward, exclaiming with delight. After ten days at sea without a glimpse of land, or even a ship, an island is a welcome sight. Especially if it is a South Sea island, thrusting its jagged volcanic peaks into the bluest of heavens, and covered with tropical verdure. There were two islands ahead of us, on the left Tahiti, and' on the right Moo-rea. Both belong to the group known as the Society Islands. This name, when I used to hear it as a child, always called up visions of beautifully gowned ladies and gentlemen in immaculate evening dress, lounging and conversing- in marble halls amid palnis and orchestras—-until I learned that the island group got its name not from any particular brilliancy of social life which characterized it. but from the famous Royal Society of England, which sponsored its exploration. Perhaps my strange delusion of elegance and finery was foster-' cd by the knowledge that the islands arc a French possession.

We headed toward Tahiti. Gradually we were able to distinguish, at the foot of those steep mountain slopes draped with light green transparent velvet, a strip of darker green at the ocean’s edge, where a bright, ribbon of white surf marked the boundary between land and water. This dark green strip resolved itself into groves of coconut pabns and thickly leafed trees, among which gleamed houses, white and pink and green, and' above which rose two church spires painted red. We nosed our way into the harbour of the island’s principal town, Papeete, and were maneuvered into* position beside a wharf.

The town was en fete. The arrival of a. mail steamer at. Papeete is always an event. It appeared that almost the entire population had come to the dock to welcome us. A holiday had been declared l , and a 1! were arrayed in their Sunday best.

The women wore bright-coloured' frocks. Many were barefoot. Here and there were groups of men in white linen and pith helmets, or in khaki drill. With us had come several wellknown motion picture “stars”— Ramon Nbvaro. Renee Adoree, and others—to make a. new film with TaTSti ns its setting. The entire company—actors, directors, camera men and teehniCinl experts—had made no small contribution to our entertainment during the voyage, and we were loath to part with them. Some members of the company had been to Tahiti before (to make “White Shadows of the South Seas’ - ; and all were given a special welcome. A banner bearing the word (^ (^COlDe, was displayed on the dock, and garlands of magnolia and other blossom's were hung about •he necks of these welcome guests. Already hatches were open and cargo was being discharged. Sonya and I walked, through the shady interior of a warehouse, where that indefinable odour of tropical godown, never encountered elsewhere, unique among smells, gave notice that we were in a land of exotic, heavy perfumes. Strange ly blended it 'seems to be of copra, sugar cane, vanilla beans, pineapples, hemp and a dozen other elements. Through white, hard streets we walked, where the tropic sun beat down and drove us 1 to the shelter of narrow pavements roofed over with wooden awnings. There -were scores of shops, their fronts opening wide upon .be side-walk. Each of them displayed a multitude of wares of all descriptions, and almost every shop was presided over by a 'Chinaman. Here, as elsewhere in the Pacific and the Far hast, retail try.de has passed almost entirely into the hands of Chinese. Some of them are Chinese only by extraction; having been born on the island, they do not speak Chinese, but only French, with a smattering of Polynesian dialects. There is something very homelike about these Chinese shops. The mem chatter and wait upon customers, while the women l and children sit wide-eyed upon the doorstep, or do the work of the household in dim recesses at the rear of the shop. Yellow-skinned babies are everywhere.

On every hand is a great profusion of tropical fruit. We buy—for a franc or two in the brass tokens issued by the local Chamber of Commerce—baskets artfully woven of palm fronds and heaped high with alligator pears, pineapples, papayas, bananas and limes, all of the finest, delicious and fragrant fs flower!?. At a wheeled; cart by the roadside, flank?d by glowing hibiscus and sheltered under a profusion of Bougainvillaea blossoms, we stop to drink the water of the coconut. The Chinese vendor selects a nut from which the green hull has been stripped. With a quick stroke of his sharp machete he cuts a hole in the top of if. Within is a pint or so of cool, clear water, -sweet with the flavour of the nut. Sonya and I pass the nut from one to the other as a loving cup, staking our thirst and laughing at the spectacle we must present to passers-by. We hir.e a motorcar and are taken for a drive. Out beyond the town and along the shore we go. Through grove after gro'.*3 of -palms, past dozens of little frame bungalows and bamboo cottages raised upon stilts a foot or two off the ground, bowered in rich profusion of flowering trees and shrubs which we have never seen before and of which we do not know the names. (Here and there a little stream tumbles down from the mountain heights; black streams they are, for though the watei is crystal clear, it flows over the black rock and looks not unlike ink where il rests in pools. Always the sound ol pounding surf is 1 in our ears, where the blue waves break into white foam an'c spray upon the smooth black sand oi countless beaches. We climb a hill am look down upon a vast forest of palms with every individual frond gleaming brilliantly in the afternoon sunlight At our feet the waves continue theii unceasing task of wearing cavern's ii the steep red cliff. Twenty minutes’ driving brings ids to

cur objective. In a coconut grove beside a beach is a small inclosure surrounded by an iron fence. Within, a sort column rises from a star-shaped baise of masonry, and on its summit is a sphere. Here Captain Cook in 1769 made his observation of the tansit of Venus. A-s we stand beside this monument and laughingly recall his experiences with the natives on that occaisiion, as related in his “Voyages,” two dark-eyed, tattered, barefoot children steal noiselessly up and offer us garlands of flowers which they have woven. We hang them about our necks and give the expected present of sixpence's. The monument is weather-beaten and rather untidy. The coconut igrove is strangely melancholy. We drive back to Papeete. We sail after dark. The captain skillfully takes us out through the harrow, unlighted entrance to the harbour, while waves break -threateningly upc-n coral reefs to either side of us. Though it is dark and we are headed out to sea, the fragrance of the island follows us. . The air is actually saturated with perfume of flowears and fruit.

As we stood together on the boat deck, looking at a star which sent a path of light ueios® the water, Sonya

suddenly grasped my arm: “My dear,” she exclaimed, “I’ve forgotten, something important. I didn’t get a grass shirt in Tahiti, and I do so wane one.” “Perhaps you can get c.ne in -Rarotonga,” I reassured her. “We shall be there in two days ”—L.R.M. n the “Christian Science Monitor.”