OUR ILLUSTRATIONS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue XIV, 6 October 1900, Page 650

OUR ILLUSTRATIONS.

Ol It FLAG IX THE PACIFIC. This issue contains some interesting views of those islands in the Pacific which are about to be incorporated with New Zealand. The Cook Group are pretty weW known by illustration to New Zealanders. Palmerston Island. which lies between Aitutaki and Savage Island, is not so familiar. It consists of a group of nine or ten small coral islets, circular in form, connected by a reef and covered with cocoanut and other trees. There is a native population, and a white trader lives there. A considerable amount of copra is grown, and vessels bound to Auckland from Rarotonga- occasionally call there. It lies between Aitutaki and Savage Island. There are dense groves of cocoanut trees, and some valuable timber, like Spanish mahogany. grows there. Arrowroot grows well. Some years ago a vessel, the Queen’s Island, bound from San Francisco to Newcastle. New South Wales, called at Palmerston Island, believing it to be uninhabited. He found the chief of the island a William Marston, who stated he had run away from the British barque Rifleman at Tahiti, twentyfive years before. After spending two or three years on Palmerston Island, he undertook to plant it with cocoanuts. At the time the Island Queen visited rhe place it had thirty-three inhabitants. Marston had married a half-caste Kanaka woman, and was the father of eleven sons and four daughters. All the islanders speak English fluently. The old man standing at the door of the house in our photo, is Marston himself. The young girl in the small picture is a native of Humphrey Island, or Manahiki Island. It produces in abundance copra, pearl-sheH and beche-de-nier. The vHlasre is on the west side of the island. There is no entrance into the lagoon. The island is visible Twelve miles. Vessels trade here from Rarotonga.

Savage Island, in connection with which we give two interesting views, is an isolated raised coral island lying about 1500 miles N'.N.E of Auckland, and to the eastward of the Friendly Islands. It has a population of some 5000 natives, who make good hats, mats, fans, etc., and also make copra for export. The island is about 200 feet high, and is about ten or twelve miles in length and between thirty and forty miles in circuit. Arrowroot, cotton, copra, hats, and fungus are the chief exports. The copra goes to Tonga for export to Europe. The varquantine Ysabel, of Auckland, is a regular trader to the island. There are two chief anchorages for vessels, one at Avatele and the other at Alofi, where several traders reside. Mr Laws is the resident missionary on the island. The Premier paid a visit to the island recently in the Government steamer Tutanekai. and had an interview with the native king.