Forty Years On The Pacific/Other Islands

by Frank Coffee

Easter Island—The Carolines—Norfolk, Pitcairn, Lord Howe, And Fanning Islands

OF the numerous small islands detached from the main groups that lie scattered throughout the Pacific, I shall be able to refer to only a few that possess features of unusual interest, although I have material enough about them to make a book. Some day I may write a book entirely devoted to these small islands, especially now as Japan seems anxious to acquire some of them since the advent of Peace.

The most tantalizing archeological puzzle of the Pacific is Easter Island, with its strange images of stone, ancient dwellings and antediluvian caves. Dropped at haphazard in the sea, a thousand miles from anywhere, and owing a passive allegiance to the Chilean Government, Easter Island is one of the wonders of the world, and holds a secret that no man has yet read. Many earnest and learned seekers have visited the place and seen the monuments of a riddle past that it boldly flaunts as if to challenge their shrewdest investigation, and have come away little wiser than when they arrived, leaving the island as inscrutable as ever.

Along the coast of the island great terraces of solid masonry have been built of square stones by the primitive inhabitants. This was no small task, for the stones used are large and cumbrous, many of them six feet long, and they had to be conveyed long distances from the quarries. Upon these terraces stood the gray stone figures that have made Easter Island so famous and so mysterious. These figures all looked out to sea, sneering coldly at the unbroken horizon. The past tense is justified in speaking of these terrace figures because many of them have fallen or have been thrown down.

In feature these images are all exactly alike; the type of face is certainly intellectual rather then stupid, but the most noticeable characteristic is the look of supercilious scorn with which each gazes ahead. The lips are thin and protuberant, and a perpetual sneer is forever fixed upon these stony faces.

It is stated that there are five hundred and f.fty-five of these images complete or in various stages of demolition. They are of various sizes, some of them being small, perhaps only four feet high, while the largest is almost eighty feet. But the average height is about seventeen feet.

While most people have heard of these stone images, they are not the only relics left on the island of a lost people and an unwritten history. Many other structures exist which in some degree resemble cave dwellings. These are solidly built of masonry and are long, narrow, and not very high. One of them measures, roughly, one hundred feet long, with an interior chamber about six feet wide and three feet high. Originally, these chambers were lined with decorated timber slabs.

It is idle for a layman like myself to speculate upon the origin of the figures on this island. The remains of a forgotten people are not altogether unique in the Pacific, for in the Caroline Islands, in Tonga and elsewhere, are strange monuments just as inexplicable, though very different in form. There are great tombs in Tonga, for example, that give evidence of a power of mechanical contrivance quite beyond the present generation of Tongans.

Ethnologists have given some attention to the Easter Island puzzle, but so far it seems that there is little prospect that the supercilious gray faces will ever open their sealed and pursed lips to tell their past, or that documents hidden in the heavy masonry will ever unfold their pages to inquiring modern eyes.

Another "enchanted region of archeology," as it has been called, is the Caroline Islands. In this group are massive ruins also, one of a strange water-town, an ancient island Venice, whose origin is as mysterious as that of the stone figures on Easter Island.

Tourists seldom penetrate into the jungle-covered fastnesses of the Carolines, and steamers give them a wide berth, as a rule, owing to the dangerous reefs surrounding them. Hundreds of acres—in the case of what are known as Nan Matal ruins, as much as eleven square miles—are covered by the remains of walls, canals, and earthworks of the most stupendous character, built upon a general plan such as could have been only conceived by men of power and intelligence, acquainted with mechanical appliances for raising enormous weights and transporting huge blocks of stone considerable distances by both land and water. These works, which strike even civilized men with astonishment, could have been only carried out by the labor of thousands of men working in concert and under command; and they proved that their builders must have had at the time of their erection some form of settled government and system of religion. By whom and for what purpose they were built, are questions to which no answer has yet been given. Years ago, American commissions visited these Caroline ruins, as well as those on Easter Island, and made a thorough investigation of the relics, but they were not able, so far as I can learn, to arrive at any definite conclusion.

On the eastern end of the Taumoto Archipelago and southeast of Tahiti, is situated Pitcairn Island, with which is associated stirring events, as it was the home of the mutineers of the Bounty. The Bounty was under the command of Captain Bligh, who afterward became Governor of Nova Scotia. The iron will arbitrarily exercised by Bligh was the cause of the mutiny, the leader of which was Chief-officer Christian, who placed Bligh and eighteen of the crew in a small boat and set them adrift. After drifting about for forty-two days they landed at Coepang (Timor), three thousand six hundred miles away. Christian, together with other members of the mutinous crew, settled on Pitcairn Island, and married native girls who were brought from Tahiti. By 1856 the Pitcairn Islanders had increased in population to such an extent that some of them were transferred to Norfolk Island.

The Pitcairners, who now number about one hundred and fifty, are all Seventh Day Adventists. They have a church and a school, and the schoolmaster is preacher as well as medical adviser. The day's work is begun and ended with a religious ceremony. The inhabitants seem to be a happy people, with no desire to be disturbed or influenced by the outside world.

Pitcairn Island is about two and a half miles long and one mile wide. In the center of it rises a hill a thousand feet high. The island comes under the administration of the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific.

Norfolk Island

Norfolk Island, to which the other descendants of the Bounty migrated, is one of the most lovely island jewels set in the Pacific. It is about a thousand miles from Sydney, and four hundred miles northwest of New Zealand. This island was discovered by Captain Cook in 1774. It was used as a penal settlement, and the terrific punishments inflicted by men as brutal as the convicts themselves constitute the blackest page in the history of the old Colonial days. The moral sense of the British public was outraged by the disclosures that were made of the depravity and cruelty that went on in Norfolk Island under the convict regime, and in 1856 the prisoners were removed, and in their place a number of the Pitcairn families settled. With the introduction of these peaceful folk the scene of so much convict vice and misery underwent what might be called a spiritual transformation.

The Norfolk Islanders gain an easy livelihood by growing fruits, etc., for export, and by whale fishery. The island is the headquarters of the Melanesian (Anglican) Mission, and is also in communication with the outside world by means of the Pacific cable.

Lord Howe Island

Another gem of the Pacific is Lord Howe Island, lying nearly midway between the Australian coast and Norfolk Island. Robert Louis Stevenson described his first view of this island as the most beautiful picture he had ever seen. In addition to its picturesqueness, the island possesses an equable climate, and the luxurious wealth of its vegetation and the varied charms of its natural beauties have warranted its description as "a small terrestrial paradise, which nature delights to beautify." It is noted as the home of the Kentia palms, which are indigenous to this one spot alone of the earth's surface. The Kentia palms are acknowledged as the hardiest, the most beautiful and most useful of all palms, and for decorative purposes cannot be excelled. Quite an export trade in the seed of this palm is carried on with Europe and America.

The island is seven miles long and contains an erea of 3,220 acres. The annual crop is about 5,000 bushels, grown on 300 acres, the sale of which is under the control of the New South Wales Government, and generally realizes from £10,000 to £12,000 annually.

There must be something peculiar about the soil of this island, as it also grows onions of a freakish nature, as is evidenced by a case of onions being washed ashore from a wreck, and which when planted in April, produces a small, nice flavored pickling onion, while those planted in June produces large white cooking onions.

Maiden Island, in the possession of the Melbourne firm of Grice, Summer & Co., is peopled by about a hundred Kanakas, who work the phosphate deposits. It is an arid little spot and has no lures whatever as a tourist resort.

Fanning and Christmas Islands could easily take up several pages, especially concerning the cable and wireless stations at Fanning Island. Four degrees north of the equator lies Fanning. I have passed it at different times, but the first time I stopped there was in 1904, to the best of my recollection. We did not go ashore, but lay outside, and while at anchor I never saw so many sharks as were swimming around the stern of the ship.

Communication with Fanning Island has been most unsatisfactory for the residents. Sometimes, the Oceanic Company's steamers would stop there going one way; then it was discontinued because the service did not pay. Later on, the Union Company's, of New Zealand, steamers stopped there occasionally, but they were discontinued also. The Pacific Cable Board built an auxiliary schooner, The Strathcona, in Auckland, in 1917, to run between Fanning Island and Honolulu. But on its maiden trip to Fanning Island the vessel was wrecked at a total loss.

The Fanning cable station was destroyed and the cable cut by the German cruiser Numberg in September, 1914. In a short time, however, repairs were completed by the cable company's staff, and communication was restored.

A Scotchman by the name of Greg once owned Fanning and Washington Islands, the latter sixty-five miles to the northwest. Greg married a native princess, a sister of the King of Rakahanhaga, near Manihiki, by whom he had eight children, all of whom he had educated at good schools.

Practically, the only product of these islands is the cocoanut. There is an immense lagoon there infested with sharks; so much so, that an area of the water has to be enclosed with barbed wire to enable the few residents to have salt water baths.

In 1907, Fanning and Washington Islands came into the possession of a missionary—Father Rougier—who had loaned money on them. It was there that the Church and the Law met in conflict, with the Church triumphant. A well-known solicitor in Fiji, since deceased, thought he was getting a half interest in the property, but as he had put in no money the missionary would not entertain his claim. The islands were sold under foreclosure at Suva, Fiji, on November 30, 1907, for the sum of 25,000 pounds.

The missionary, Father Rougier, subsequently sold Fanning and Washington Islands for 70,000 pounds. A British protectorate had been established over the islands, and the High Commissioner of the Western Pacific made an order prohibiting the sale to any one other than a British subject, and I believe it is now owned by a British syndicate.

The white population of Fanning Island consists of some twenty persons, mostly employed at the cable station, and about two hundred natives recruited from the Gilbert Islands for the cocoanut plantations.

In the vicinity of Fanning are the Washington, Christmas and Palmyra Islands, annexed by the British about 1889, although the latter was discovered by Captain Sawle of the American ship, Palmyra, in 1802. Lagoons, teeming with fish, turtles and lobsters, abound in the place; and in fact Judge Cooper, of Honolulu, who now owns Palmyra Island, contemplates establishing a fish canning factory there.

Wreck of the Aeon

Christmas Island, discovered by Captain Cook on Christmas Day, 1777, upon which some cocoanut trees are growing, was the scene of the wreck, in 1908, of the British freight steamer Aeon (5,000 tons), which, with cargo, was insured for $400,000; a craft that was purchased from Lloyd's, in London, by Mr. Duffy and myself.

The Aeon was bound from San Francisco to Australia, and was carried by a strong current into an indentation on the east side of the island, known as Dangerous Bight, where she stranded. Among the passengers were the wife of Lieutenant Riddell, U. S. N., and three children; Chaplain Kilpatrick, his wife, and a nurse, who were bound for Pago Pago, the American naval station. While on the island where they were wrecked Mrs. Kilpatrick gave birth to a child and it was called "Christmas."

Mr. Duffy and I sold half an interest in the Aeon to a New Zealand syndicate. To save the cargo and to see what prospects there were for saving the vessel, an auxiliary schooner, The Zingara, owned by Captain Ross and commanded by Captain Robinson, with a crew of eleven white men and twenty pearl divers, picked up at Nuie in the Navigator group, was dispatched to the island.

Knowing the weakness of the Pacific Islanders for exploiting wrecks, I wrote notifications and cabled warnings to Noumea, Suva, Apia and Tahiti to the effect that the wreck was our property. Also, to offset the enterprising spirit to be found in the Hawaiian Islanders I cabled James Mclnerney, of Honolulu, to insert a warning in the press against tampering with the Aeon or its cargo. But press warnings have no terrors for Hawaiians, for the Concord, under the command of Captain Eben Low (whom the Honolulu Advertiser described as a cow-puncher and gentlemanly pirate), was fitted out at once, and left for the wreck of our ship with full freebooter intentions.

Learning of the departure of Captain Low's ship I sent the following additional cable from Sydney:

"Halstead and Mclnerney, Honolulu. Our lawyer advises to apply for protection of American navy against piracy, on account of being a citizen of the United States. Insert local and San Francisco newspapers."

I have never discovered how the Concord got her clearance from Honolulu, but she hove-to off Fanning Island and Captain Low went ashore and kidnaped Willie Greg, and compelled this resourceful youth to pilot the pirate crew to the scene of the wreck. Prior to his kidnaping the astute Willie, aiming to secure two strings to his bow, cabled me from Fanning at Sydney:

"Are you prepared buy valuable recent news of Aeon (signed) Greg."

On visiting Honolulu later, Captain Low informed me that he found a more desperate crew of pirates than his own had preceded him to the wreck, looting the cargo and dynamiting the ship as they pleased; so Captain Low, after securing a few tins of California prunes, some china and glassware that remained, proceeded to Fanning Island, liberated Greg, loaded his ship with cocoanuts and returned to Honolulu.

I found Captain Low a most hospitable pirate. He entertained my son Leo and me at an Hawaiian feast (luau), where we met his charming wife and family, together with several friends. The dinner was something to remember, consisting, as it did, of one- and two-finger poi and many native fruits and fishes, served for the most part raw and wrapped in leaves. As we went through the bill-of-fare my son Leo's face was a study. The course that attracted his attention by its unusual ingredients was that of little shrimps running about on the table. If one was quick and dexterous enough, he could catch one and eat it alive!

The crew and passengers of the Aeon remained on Christmas Island for several weeks, then Captain Downey salved a gasolene engine, installed it in a life-boat, and in this he proceeded to Fanning Island, one hundred and forty-five miles northwest. There he cabled his agents, Howard Smith & Co., Sydney. In due time the Union Company's steamer Manuka stopped at Christmas Island, sent boats ashore and rescued the passengers, crew and mail. Christmas Island was sold in 1917 by the Lever Brothers to Father Rougier for $50,000; the missionary by this purchase acquired extensive cocoanut groves in full bearing.

Ocean Island, on the equator, is about six miles in circumference, and one of the richest spots for its size on the globe. Its wealth consists of vast deposits of phosphates operated by an English company. A few years ago this company exported one hundred thousand tons of phosphates yearly, worth, when loaded, $12.50 a ton. As there is no harbor, ships in rough weather have to lay to until the sea moderates enough to permit surf boats, carrying two tons, to come alongside. Sir Arthur Gordon, afterward Lord Stanmore, a former governor of Fiji and Higu Commissioner of the Western Pacific, having jurisdiction over the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, granted concessions to this company and subsequently became their chairman.

The island of Nauru, not far distant, on the equator, is claimed to possess larger deposits of phosphates than Ocean Island, estimated at 40,000,000 tons and valued at 100,000,000 pounds. It was controlled by the Germans until the war broke out. A British man-o'-war, sent out to capture Nauru, found a modern fortress fully equipped erected on the island.

To the west of Nauru is Angaur Island, also containing rich phosphate deposits, which the Japanese have been working for a period of several years.

Various origins are assigned to the presence of phosphates in the Pacific islands, but it is generally accepted that bird droppings, which form the guano, are, by action of rain, sun and wind, accountable for the phosphates which are found deposited between pinnacles of coral rock. Alarm is being felt for future supplies of guano, as the birds are being slaughtered for their plumage, which was shipped to France and used by milliners. Whatever race is responsible for the depredations, much indignation has been aroused by the barbarous practice. These cruel poachers are accused of driving the birds, which are very tame and fat, into caves and starving them until they are emaciated, when the feathers are easily removed. In order to check this vandalism and protect the birds, the United States sent a man-o'-war, the Thetis, in 1909, to Lysan Lisianski and Midway Island on a cruise to warn invaders. On arrival the naval authorities arrested twenty-four Japanese poachers and took them to Honolulu for trial. At that time it was estimated that three hundred thousand birds were destroyed annually.

New settlers, who have introduced domestic animals to the Pacific islands, have strange experiences. As we have noted before, birds have been introduced to destroy insect pests, and in time have become pests themselves, calling for destruction. One settler at Rapa imported a setting of eggs from California, and having no hens he put them in an incubator to hatch, and in due time a brood of chickens came out; but singular to relate, they did not display the inherent habit of the hen tribe of scratching for food, so they had to be fed by hand. Later on, a neighboring islander brought over some hens from which these imported incubator chicks acquired the habit of scratching for their daily food.

It is generally supposed that the pigs that abound on most of the islands were introduced by Captain Cook, but those who have read the accounts of the great navigator's voyaging will not fall into this popular error. Over and over again Cook speaks of bartering pieces of iron and other articles for supplies of hogs, fruit and vegetables from the islanders. Thus it is substantiated that there were plenty of pigs in the Pacific islands in the days of Captain Cook.