_Is It the Loveliest?--How they deal with the Beachcomber----Cockroaches
and Local Colour--The Robinson Crusoe-Steamer--Emigrating to the South
Seas--The Lands of Plenty--How to get an Island._
EVERY ONE has seen Raratonga, though few travellers have looked on it
with their own mortal eyes.
Close your eyelids, and picture to yourself a South Sea Island, of the
kind that you used to imagine on holiday afternoons long ago, when you
wandered off down to the shore alone, to sit in a cave and look
seaward, and fancy yourself Crusoe or Selkirk, and think the “long, long
thoughts” of youth. Dagger-shaped peaks, of splendid purple and gorgeous
green, set in a sky of flaming sapphire--sheer grey precipices, veiled
with dropping wreaths of flowery vine and creeper--gossamer shreds of
cloud, garlanding untrodden heights, high above an ocean of stainless
blue--shadowy gorges, sweeping shoreward from the unseen heart of the
hills--white foam breaking upon white sand on the beach, and sparkling
sails afloat in the bay--is not this the picture that wanders ever among
the gleams and glooms that dart across the schoolboy’s brain?
It is not very like the average South Sea Island on the whole--but it is
a faithful portrait of Raratonga, the jewel of the Southern Seas.
Nothing is more hotly disputed than the claims of the many beautiful
islands among the numberless groups of the Pacific to the crown of
supremest loveliness. Tahiti is awarded the apple of Paris by many,
Honolulu by a few, Samoa by all who have been there and nowhere else.
The few who have seen the quaint loveliness of Manahiki, or Humphrey
Island, uphold its claims among the highest, and for myself, I have
never been quite certain whether the low atoll islands are not more
lovely than all else, because of their matchless colouring. But, if
one pins one’s faith to the high islands, the accepted type of Pacific
loveliness, there is nothing more beautiful between ’Frisco and Sydney,
Yokohama and Cape Horn, than Raratonga, chief island of the Cook
archipelago.
These islands lie some sixteen hundred miles north-east of New Zealand,
and about six hundred miles to the westward of Tahiti. They are eight in
number, seven inhabited, and one uninhabited, and cover about a hundred
and sixty miles of sea. The largest, Atiu, is about thirty miles
round, Raratonga, which is the principal island, containing the seat of
government and the only “white” town, is twenty miles in circumference.
The whole group, as well as a number of outlying islands as much as six
and seven hundred miles away, is under the guardianship of the Resident
Commissioner appointed by New Zealand, to which colony the islands were
annexed in 1900. The government, as administered by Colonel Gudgeon, a
soldier who won much distinction in the days of the New Zealand Maori
wars, is all that could be desired. The beachcomber element, which is so
unpleasantly in evidence in other groups, has been sternly discouraged
in the Cook Islands, the Commissioner having the right to deport any one
whose presence seems undesirable to the cause of the general good. It
is a right not infrequently used. During my stay in the island, two
doubtful characters, recently come, were suspected of having committed
a robbery that took place in the town. There was practically no one
else on the island who could have done the deed, or would--but direct
evidence connecting the strangers with the crime, was not to be had.
Under these circumstances, the Commissioner simply deported the men
by the next steamer, giving no reason beyond the fact that they were
without means of support. There were no more thefts. The colonel might,
in the same manner, have ordered myself away by the next steamer, and
compelled it to carry me to New Zealand, if he had had reason to suppose
that I was likely to disturb the peace of the island in any way,
or incite it to violence or crime. The doctor--also a Government
official--was empowered to regulate the amount of liquor consumed by any
resident, if it appeared to exceed the permitted amount--two bottles of
spirits a week. Under these circumstances, one would expect Raratonga to
be a little Arcadia of innocence and virtue. If it was not quite
that, it was, and is, a credit to British Colonial rule, in all things
essential.
Before the annexation, the government was chiefly in the hands of the
Protestant missionaries, who, with the best intentions in the world,
carried things decidedly too far in the way of grandmotherly laws. Even
white men were forbidden to be out of doors after eight o’clock in the
evening, on pain of a heavy fine, and the offences for which the
natives were fined would be incredible, were they not recorded in the
Governmental reports of New Zealand.
In Raratonga of the older days (not yet ten years past) a native who
walked at dusk along the road with his sweetheart, his arm round her
waist after the manner of sweethearts all the world over, was obliged to
carry a burning torch in his hand, and was fined if he let it go out.
If he was found weeping over the grave of a woman to whom he was not
related (surely the strangest crime in the world) he was again brought
up and fined. These are only samples of the vagaries of irresponsible
missionary rule, but they go far to prove that spiritual and temporal
legislation are better kept apart.
A Government accommodation house had been planned, but not built, when I
visited Raratonga, so I arranged, on landing, to take an unused house by
the week, and “do for” myself, as there seemed no other way of living.
Scarcely had I taken possession of my quarters, however, when the
residents came down to call, and invite me to stay in their house. I
did not know any of them, and they did not know me, but that did not
matter--we were not in chilly England, where a whole country-side must
discuss your personal history, family connections, probable income, and
religious views, for a good six months, before deciding whether you are
likely to be an acquisition or not, and calling accordingly. I began to
understand, now, the meaning of the term “colonial hospitality,” which
had formerly fallen on uncomprehending ears. And when I was settled down
that evening in the most delightful of bungalow houses, with a charming
host and hostess, and a pretty daughter, all doing their best to make me
feel at home, I realised that I was about to see something of the true
island life at last.
[Illustration: 0035]
It began rather sooner than I could have wished. When my new friends had
gone to bed, and left me sitting up alone in the hall to write letters
for the morning’s mail, the local colour commenced to lay itself on
somewhat more rapidly and thickly than I desired. I am not particularly
nervous about insects, but it is trying, when one is quite new to the
tropics, to see a horde of cockroaches as large as mice, with fearsome
waving horns, suddenly appear from nowhere, and proceed to overrun the
walls and floor, with a hideous ticking noise. And when one has steeled
oneself to endure this horrid spectacle, it is still more trying to
be shocked by the silent irruption of dozens of brown hairy
hunting-spiders, each big enough to straddle over a saucer, which dart
about the walls on their eight agile legs, and slay and eat the beetles,
crunching audibly in the silence of the night.... Truly, it was like a
waking nightmare.
Those cockroaches! What I suffered from them, during the year or two of
island travel that followed! How they spoiled my tea, and ate my dresses
(or parts of them), and flew into my hair of moonlight nights, and
climbed into my berth on shipboard! It was on a liner that shall be
nameless, very early in the course of my wanderings, that I first
discovered the tendency of the cockroach to share the voyager’s couch
unasked, and never again did I know unvexed and trustful sleep aboard
a tropic ship. It was a moonlight night, and I was lying looking
peacefully at the brilliantly silvered circle of my port, when suddenly
a horrid head, with waving feelers, lifted itself over the edge of my
berth and stared me coldly in the face. I hit out, like the virtuous
hero in a novel, and struck it straight between the eyes, and it dropped
to the floor with a dull sickening thud, and lay there very still. I
thought gloatingly of how the blood would trickle out under my door in
the morning in a slow hideous stream, and how the stewardess, bringing
my early tea, would start and stop, and say in an awestruck tone that
one that night had met his doom--and so thinking, I fell asleep.
I woke, with one cockroach in my hair, chewing a plait, and another
nibbling my heel. I got up and looked round. It was then that I wished
I had never come away from home, and that, since I had come, my sex
forbade me to go and berth in the hold. I was convinced that, if I could
have done so, I should have had a quiet night, because the hold is
the part of a ship where the cockroaches come from, and they had all
_come_--they were on the floor of my cabin, and sitting about the quilt.
The hideous battle raged all night, and in the morning I asked one
of the mates for an axe, to help me through the coming renewal of
hostilities. He recommended boracic acid instead, and I may record, for
the benefit of other travellers, that I really found it of some use.
[Illustration: 0043]
To find out, as far as possible, what were the prospects for settlers in
some of the principal Pacific groups, was the main object of my journey
to the Islands. It had always seemed to me that the practical side of
Pacific life received singularly little attention, in most books of
travel. One could never find out how a living was to be made in the
island world, what the cost of housekeeping might be, what sort of
society might be expected, whether the climates were healthy, and so
forth--matters prosaic enough, but often of more interest to readers
than the scenic descriptions and historical essays that run naturally
from the pen of any South Sea traveller.
Certainly, the romantic and picturesque side of the islands is so
obvious that it takes some determination, and a good deal of actual hard
work, to obtain any other impressions whatever. But white human beings,
even in the islands, cannot live on romance alone, and many people, in
Britain and elsewhere, are always anxious to know how the delightful
dream of living in the South Seas may be realised. Practical details
about island life, therefore, will take up the most of the present
chapter, and readers who prefer the lighter and more romantic vein, must
turn the pages a little further on. .
The number of those who wish to settle in the Pacific is by no means
small.
The Pacific Ocean has always had a special interest for the English,
from the days of Drake s daring circumnavigation, through the times of
Captain Cook and the somewhat misunderstood Bligh, of the _Bounty_, down
to the dawn of the twentieth century. The very name of the South Seas
reeks of adventure and romance. Every boy at school has dreams of coral
islands and rakish schooners, sharks, and pearls; most men retain a
shamefaced fancy for stories of peril and adventure in that magical
South Sea world, of whose charm and beauty every one has heard, although
very few are fortunate enough to see it with their own bodily eyes. For
the Pacific Islands are, both in point of time and distance, about the
remotest spots on the surface of the globe, and they are also among
the most costly for the ordinary traveller to reach. Thus, for the
most part, the South Seas dream, which so many hot-blooded young Saxons
cherish, remains a dream only. The youth who has a fancy for Canadian
farming life, or for stock-raising in Australasia, may gratify his
desire with the full approval of parents and guardians in private life,
and of Empire-builders in high places. But the British possessions in
the South Seas--and what extensive possession they are let Colonial maps
prove--may cry out for settlers from the rainy season to the dry, and
round again to the rainy season once more, without attracting a single
colonist of the right kind.
What is the reason of this? Where is the broken link? The British
Pacific Islands need settlers; young Britons at home are only too ready
to adventure themselves. Why do they not? There are several reasons. The
first, perhaps, is that neither party can hear the other. In England few
possess any information about the South Sea Islands. In the Pacific
the white residents (almost all New Zealand traders and Government
officials) are possessed with an idea that only wastrels of the worst
kind drift out from England to the South Seas, and that nothing better
is to be looked for. The result is that at the present date young
Englishmen by the hundred are losing their small capital as “pupils” on
Canadian farms, or are starving on the roads in South Africa, while
all the time the South Sea Islands hold out hands of peace and plenty,
begging humbly for a respectable white population. The brown races are
dying out with fearful rapidity; at their best they never touched the
limitless capacities of the golden Pacific soil. Its richness has always
seemed to the original inhabitants an excellent reason for abstaining
from cultivation. When the earth produced of itself everything that was
necessary for comfort, why trouble to work it? Now, however, when
so many groups of fertile islands have fallen into the hands of more
progressive nations, things are changed. The white man can live happily
and healthily in the Pacific; he can obtain a good return for a small
capital at the best, and at the worst cannot possibly suffer from either
cold or hunger, since neither exists in the South Seas. He can lease or
buy land from the natives at slight cost, work it with small labour, and
sell the product to a sure market. Honesty, sobriety, and industry repay
their possessor as almost nowhere else in the world. Yet, with all this,
the white settler in the Pacific Islands is generally of a more or less
undesirable kind.
The “beachcomber” white, without friends, means, or character; the
“remittance man,” paid to keep as far away from home as possible; the
travelling ne’er-do-well, with a taste for novelties in dissipation,
and a fancy for being outside the limit of Press and post--all these are
familiar figures in the Pacific. Kipling’s Lost Legion musters there by
the score; the living ghosts of men whose memorial tablets are blinking
white on the walls of English country churches, walk by daylight along
the coral beaches. Only the steady man, the young energetic man with a
future and without a past, the man who can get on without a three-weekly
spree of the most torrid kind, commonly keeps away. And these are just
the men that the “Islands” want. Local trading interest, religious
and otherwise, often does its best to keep them from coming, through
a natural, if scarcely praiseworthy, desire to retain personal hold of
everything worth holding. The Governmental party of every group desires
the respectable settler with a little capital, and expresses its desire,
as a rule, in gentle wails delivered through Governmental reports--a
method about as effective as putting one’s head into a cupboard to hail
a ’bus in the street. The Press does not recognise the existence of
any habitable land in the Pacific, outside Honolulu and Samoa. So the
dead lock continues.
I can see the Left Behind in the office raise his head at this, and
look through the muddy panes of the counting-house window, or across
the piles of summer goods on the shop counters, out beyond the clanging
street, and right through the whole round world to the far-away Pacific
lands. He wants to get away so very badly, that poor Left Behind, and he
does not quite see his way to do it, because every one discourages him
if he hints at the subject, and he does not know how one could make a
living, out in those fairy lands that he wishes so much to see. Well, I
am on his side in this matter. If it is a crime to long for a glimpse
of the wonderful island world, to ache for a life spent under the free
winds of heaven, and a chance of the danger, adventure, and
excitement, which are as strong wine to the heart of almost every young
Englishman--then it is a crime shared by the best that the nation has
ever known, and one which has done more to build up the empire than all
the parochial virtues ever owned by a million Young Men’s Improvement
Societies put together.
The Islands are not the place for the ne’er-do-well, and I would also
warn the exasperating young man, who never did a square day’s work in
his life, never got into trouble with his employers or his
superiors, but always found himself misunderstood, unappreciated, and
incomprehensibly “sacked,” with an excellent character, at the first
hint of slacking business--that the islands will not suit him either.
If he comes out, he will not starve or go to the workhouse, because you
cannot die of hunger where there is always enough vegetable food to keep
the laziest alive, and you do not need workhouses, under the same happy
conditions--but he will “go native,” and there are some who would say he
had better starve, a good deal. There are men who have “gone native”
in most of the Pacific groups, living in the palm-leaf huts with the
villagers--but a white man in a waist-cloth and a bush of long hair,
sleeping on a mat and living on wild fruit and scraps given by the
generous natives, drunk half the time and infinitely lower, in his
soberest hours, than the coloured folk who unwisely put up with him, is
not a happy spectacle.
The Cook Islands, which may be taken as a sample of many other groups,
are small to look at on the map, and not over large, when one counts up
the number of square miles. But one cannot fairly estimate the value of
island land by its extent. Much of it is so rich that every foot has its
worth, and that is by no means despicable. And, in any case, there is
plenty available for the small cultivator--the man who has only a few
hundred pounds, and cannot afford to do things on the colossal scale
that makes big fortunes.
Among the productions of the group are pineapples, custard apples,
coffee, tobacco, pepper, mammee-apple or paw-paw, granadilla, cocoa,
cotton, vanilla, limes, lemons, oranges, bananas, castor-oil, and many
other useful plants, besides a number of excellent vegetables, not known
to most Europeans. Many of the fruits above mentioned grow practically
wild. Bananas come to bearing in fifteen months, cocoanuts in seven
years, limes in four or five. The water supply is good all round, and
there is a monthly steamer from Auckland.
The land in all the islands belongs to the natives, and cannot usually
be bought outright. Leases of any length, can, however, be secured
at very low rates, with the New Zealand Government laws, administered
through the Resident, to back up the titles, so that a man who plants
cocoanuts--the safest of island products--may be sure that his children
and grandchildren will enjoy the fruits of his labour.
In most of the outer islands the natives cannot use more than a small
fraction of the land, and are quite willing to let large sections at a
shilling or two an acre. In Raratonga, the chief island, there has been
more demand for land, and prices are consequently higher; also, the
chiefs are not always ready to let, even though they do not use what
they have. It may be said, however, of the group as a whole, that there
is land, and a prospect of a good return for capital, ready for any
reasonable number of settlers, if they bring habits of industry and a
determination to succeed along with them.
There are two classes of possible settlers to be considered--the man
with capital, and the man without.
How much does it take to start a man as a planter, and what return can
he expect?
Taking the Cook Islands as a general example (but by no means suggesting
that the resources of the Pacific begin and end there) the young
Englishman wishing to seek his fortune as a planter should have at least
£500 to start on, exclusive of passage-money. He can do excellently with
a few hundreds more, but it is as well to put things as low as possible.
Copra--the dried kernel of the cocoanut--is the usual, and the safest,
investment. It is always saleable, and the demand increases year by
year--so much so, that the large soapmaking firms, who are the chief
users of the product, are of late planting out islands for themselves.
The cost of clearing and planting the land is about £5 an acre. The
rent, in the outer islands, should not exceed a couple of shillings an
acre. In about seven years, the returns begin to come in, and in ten
years’ time the land should be bringing in £5 net profit for every acre
of trees. This is, of course, a long time to wait, but bananas can grow
on the same land meantime, and will generally yield a quick return. Once
the cocoanuts start bearing, they go on for sixty years or more, so
that a copra plantation is one of the best investments for a man who has
others to come after him.
Banana growing may be managed with less capital, but the profits are not
so sure, since fruit is perishable, and cannot wait for the steamer as
copra can. Coffee has been grown, but is not of late years doing well,
because of something like a “ring” formed in New Zealand to lower
the prices. Cotton used to do excellently, and I have never heard any
satisfactory reason against its being taken up afresh. It is running
wild in a good many parts of the group. The plants above mentioned,
however, by no means exhaust the resources of the islands, which are
suitable for growing anything that will live in the tropics, and are
fortunately not subject to the destructive hurricanes that from time
to time do so much damage in Tahiti and the Fijis. Hurricanes are not
absolutely unknown, but they are very rare, and not of the worst kind.
The cost of living is not very serious, but it must not be supposed that
the settlers can live decently and like white men, on nothing a year. A
house costs something to put up, and furniture to a certain small amount
is necessary, clothes do not grow on the cocoanut tree, nor do lamps and
kerosene, or tools and nails, or fishing lines, or flour and bacon and
tea and tinned butter, and the few groceries that the settler may need.
Still, with care, a single man can live quite respectably on fifty
pounds a year, and enjoy, in all probability, better health than he has
had at home.
What the time of waiting will cost the copra planter, each one must
work out for himself. He will do best to spend his capital gradually,
planting as he can afford. The returns will come in only by degrees,
but he will be saved the mortification of seeing a promising plantation
leave his possession for a third of its value, simply because he cannot
afford to wait until the profits begin.
Copra, the chief article of commerce of the Pacific, is very easily
prepared. The cocoanuts, when ripe, are husked, and emptied, and the
kernels, as a rule, left to dry in the sun, though some few planters use
artificial heat. Bagging is the only other operation necessary.
Bananas are often shipped clumsily and carelessly, in unprotected
bunches. It would be much better to pack them in leaves and crate
them, as is done in the Canary Islands, where the banana trade is the
principal support of the country. Oranges are usually shipped in crates.
They grow wild all over the Cook group, and are not attended to in any
way, but in spite of this, the orange trade with New Zealand is by no
means despicable.
Vanilla is not cultivated for market in these islands, but it would
probably repay the experimenter. It does well in most of the Pacific
groups, and the returns begin in three years from planting.
Island planters, as a race, seem to be the most conservative of men, and
very shy of trying anything new and unproved. There are, of course, good
reasons for this, but there are also excellent arguments in favour of
exploiting fresh fields. The following brief hints may prove fruitful to
enterprising minds.
Only one kind of banana--the sort familiar at home--is usually grown
for trade. There are many varieties, however, and some of the very best
travel quite as well as the commonplace “China” sort. The large red
banana, sometimes called the Aitutaki banana, sometimes the peach
banana, on account of its delicate peach-like flavour, is a fruit that
would become the fashion at once, if it could be put on the market. One
or two planters have gone so far as to send consignments down to New
Zealand, but, finding that these did not sell on account of the unusual
colour of the fruit, they never made another attempt. At the time of
my visit, in 1904, the red banana was practically unobtainable in New
Zealand or Australia. A little intelligent co-operation on the part of
the buyers would probably get over the difficulty.
The same may be said of limes, a fruit which grows wild very freely. The
lime is like a small, round-shaped lemon, and is not an attractive fruit
in appearance. It also suffers under the disadvantage of being very
badly represented as to flavour by the bottled “shop” lime-juice, with
which the taste of the fresh lime has hardly anything in common. Where
it can be obtained fresh, however, no one ever thinks of using lemon as
a flavouring in food or drink. The lime is incomparably more delicate
and refreshing than the best lemon ever grown. For some unknown reason,
however, it is not used in New Zealand, or in the cities of Australia,
to which it could be easily and profitably exported from many of the
Pacific groups. Instead, the juice of limes is squeezed out by a very
rough process, the fruit being run through a wooden hand-press, and is
shipped away in casks. The lime trade would certainly rival the orange
trade, if worked up.
Dried bananas have money in them, and the industry is especially adapted
to some of the lesser Cook Islands, where steamer calls are at present
irregular. The dried and pressed banana is better than the fig, and is
considered a great delicacy by the few people in the colonies who have
tried it. The Cook Islanders peel the fruit, and leave it to dry in
the sun. When it is shrunk, dark, and sticky with its own sugar, they
compress it into neat little packets covered with dried banana leaf, and
tied with banana fibre. These will keep good for many months. Up to the
present, the trade is extremely small, but there is no reason why it
should not be increased.
One of the chief troubles of the settler is the guava bush, which runs
wild all over the islands, and is extremely hard to destroy. It bears
quantities of excellent fruit, but guavas do not pay for exporting, so
no one, apparently, has thought of making the island pest profitable.
And yet, when I went down to New Zealand, which is in direct
communication with the Cook Islands and less than a week away, I found
the price of guava jelly in the shops was higher than it is at home.
Asked why no one in the islands sent jelly for sale, the grocers said it
was because jampots were not made in New Zealand, and had to be imported
if wanted. Since most jams in the colonies are sold in tins, this
did not appear to me an unanswerable argument. Tins are made in the
colonies, and the process of tinning jam or jelly should not be beyond
amateur powers. Moreover, common tumblers (which are also made in New
Zealand) are a good and profitable way of putting up jellies; purchasers
are always willing to pay extra for the advantage of getting something
useful along with the dainty itself.
Another item: Dried peppers bring a good price per ounce, and fine Chili
pepper grows wild everywhere. So far, trade is nil.
Another: One of the commonest plants in the Southern Pacific, a weed
bearing a bright red flower almost exactly like the pine-cone in shape,
contains, in the flower, a quantity of white watery liquid, which
is declared by the natives, and by many of the whites, to be an
exceptionally fine hair tonic. No one, so far as I know, has tried to
make anything out of this, or out of the wild castor oil, which is said
to be of good quality.
If the settler cannot find some useful hint among these, he may be able
to discover a few on the spot for himself.
The second class of settler--the man without capital, or with only a
little--is a pariah everywhere. No colony wants him, agents warn him
away, friends write to him begging him to stay where he is, and not
tempt fortune by going out unprovided with plenty of cash. No doubt
there is reason on the side of the discouragers; but there is not a
colony in the world, all the same, where you shall not find the man who
came out without capital, who endured a few years of hard work and short
commons, began to get on, began to save, went on getting on and saving,
and by-and-by became one of the most successful men in the place.
Whereupon as a rule he becomes an adviser in his turn, and solemnly
counsels young men of every kind against the imprudence of tempting
fortune with an empty purse.
For all that, and all that, young Britons will continue to do what they
are advised not to, and ships will carry out many a man to the far wild
countries whose only gold is the gold of youth and health and a brave
heart. “Sink or swim” is the motto of this kind of colonist, and if he
often goes under, he very often floats on the top, and comes in on the
flood-tide of good luck. “Fortune favours the brave”--a proverb none the
less true because of its age.
To have an island of one’s own, in the beautiful South Seas, to
live remote from strain and worry, and out of the clash and roar
of twentieth-century civilization--to pass one’s days in a land of
perpetual summer; work, but own no master, possess a country (small
though it may be) yet know none of the troubles of sovereignty--this
is an ambition of which no one need be ashamed, even though-it appear
contemptible and even reprehensible to “Samuel Budgett, the Successful
Merchant.” The planter with a fair amount of capital can realise the
dream almost any day, for every big group in the Pacific has many small
unoccupied islands which can be rented for a song, and if the newcomer
is made of stuff that can stand being totally deprived of theatres,
clubs, music halls, daily posts and papers, and a good many other charms
(or burdens) of city life, he has only to pick and choose, secure a good
title to-his island, decide what he means to grow on it, get his house
built, and settle down at once.
But people who have very little money cherish the same ambition, often
enough: There are thousands of men in the United Kingdom to whom a South
Sea Island of their-own would be heaven--only they see no way of
getting it. The desire comes, without doubt, of generations of insular
ancestors. It is the “Englishman’s house is his castle” idea carried a
step further than usual, that is all; and the boy that never wholly dies
in the heart of every Briton is always ready to wake up and rejoice at
the thought.
What is the moneyless man to do?
Well, first of all, he must get out to Sydney or Auckland, each being
a port from which island vessels constantly sail, and with which island
trade is closely concerned. It will not cost him so much as he thinks.
If he goes by Auckland, he can get a third-class ticket from London for
fifteen pounds, and Sydney is little more. Arrived, he will make use of
the information he has, of course, obtained in London, from the offices
of the Agent-General for New Zealand (or Australia, as the case may be)
and try and get a job to keep him on his feet while he looks about. If
he can do any kind of manual labour, he will not be at a loss--and if he
cannot, or will not, he had much better stay at home on an office stool
within sound of Bow Bells, and leave the far countries to men of tougher
material.
In Sydney or Auckland he will find a good many firms connected with
island trading interests, many of whom own trading stores dotted about
the whole Pacific. It is often possible to obtain a job from one of
these, if the newcomer is capable and steady. In this case, the way
of getting up to the islands is clear, and the work of copra trading,
keeping store for native customers, fruit-buying and shipping on the
spot, is the best possible training for an independent position. If this
proves a vain hope (it need not, in the case of a good man, if one may
judge by the wretched incapables who occupy the trader’s post in many
islands) our adventurer must try to raise the cost of a passage as best
he can, and see what he can get to do among the white people of the
group he has selected, when he arrives. There are so many useless
wastrels in most of the islands, that character and capability are to a
certain extent capital in themselves. Some one is generally in want of
a plantation overseer to replace a drunken employee--some one else would
be glad of a handy man to help with housebuilding of the simple island
kind--and in many islands, board and lodging, and a little over, would
be easily obtainable by any educated man, who would undertake to teach
the children of the white settlers. There are groups in which no one is
allowed to land who does not possess a certain minimum of cash, but it
is not in any case that I know of more than ten pounds, and most islands
have no such regulation.
Once so far on his journey, the would-be island owner must think out the
rest for himself. There is sure to be a small island or two for rent,
and there will probably be means of making money by slow degrees in the
group itself. Where the will is, the way will be found.
The popular dream of finding and taking possession of an unoccupied
island somewhere or other, and “squatting” there unopposed, is a dream
and nothing more. The great European nations have long since parcelled
out among themselves all the groups worth having, and rent or purchase
is the only way to acquire land. Far-away separate islands, remote from
everywhere, are still to be had for nothing in a few instances, but they
are not desirable-possessions, unless the owner can afford a private
sailing vessel, and in any case what has not been picked up is little
worth picking in these days.
So much for the how and where of acquiring islands. I shall have one or
two definite instances to give in another chapter.