SOUTH PACIFIC LINE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 132, 5 June 1937, Page 8

SOUTH PACIFIC LINE

NEW STEAMER ROUTE THE GLAMOROUS EAST TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE Travel and adventure are dear t« the hearts of most people and to many their essence is contained in the very mention of the East. There in the tropics everything is utterly different, from the commonplace of life in any temperate lands. The stars themselves shine differently, the timeless ocean breaks with more meaning on those sun-scorched sands. Those seas of romance are a far cry from this Dominion, but the inauguration of the K.P.M.’s South Pacific Line of ships has done much to open to New Zealanders the jewelled doorway to IndoChina and Malaya and the Dutch East Indies and the colourful places of which Dominion people for the most part know only too little. After breasting the bleak mid-winter seas ot the "roaring forties," a stranger from those warm tropical waters, the Dutch steamer Van Rees arrived at Wellington yesterday. To the imaginative, the very names of the ports from which she comes are magical, conjuring up visions of palmgreen islands, glittering temples, thatch-roofed villages, girls in shimmering sarongs ot gay silk, flying fish skimming the wavelets of the evening seas. For those who are not so imaginative, and to whom Saigon, Singapore, Batavia, Samarang, Sourabaya, and Port Moresby are no more than strange outlandish sounds, the K.P.M. has commissioned Mu Carl Shreve, clever artist and writer, and a world traveller, to capture something of the fascination and vivid colour of the East in a picture-book entitled, "Romance Calling!” The paintings in this book, beautifully reproduced, are remarkable both fo.n their rich colour and for their subtle atmosphere. Two score of varied topics cover a vast range of Eastern beauties. The primitive and savage Nias warriors dancing before their blazing braziers, to the light of torches, to the barbaric throb of drums, are hardly a step removed from cannibalism and head-hunting. The gilded shrines of Siam, plated with pure gold beaten transparent, reflect the patient philosophy of Buddhist worshippers. Lean praus (canoes) moored on a moonlit river, swaying elephants caparisoned with embroidered silk, grotesque dancers in dragon masks, beautiful Balinese girls with bare breasts, active volcanoes belching lurid flames against the blue-black velvety skies ablaze with stars, cannot but fire the looker with the wish to see them for himself. I But Mr Shreve has dene more than merely paint the loveliness his eyes have feasted on. He has recorded it in a series of terse notes that are 'almost prose poems. “The innermost heart of Java,” he says, for instance, “is revealed in the early morning, (when the people forgather in the market places. Piles of luscious green coconuts, royal purple mangosteens, and bronze-coloured, vanilla-scented custard apples are heaped in rich refusion. Over the drone of many voices rises the raucous age-old call of the i food-vendors, the pungent odour of j their wares penetrating the atmosphere, spicy, irresistible, sweet and alluring. Through the palm-thatchcd roof a translucent shaft of sunlight penetrates to the gleaming torso ot a Javanese coolie marketing his red rice cakes called 'apples of love.’ Voluptuous and exotic girls in batik sarongs bargain for emerald-green pawpaws, or prickly durians .... an ever-moving pageant of humanity."