NAURU, THE RICHEST ISLAND IN THE SOUTH SEAS 



589 



who always call the British Isles Home 

 with a capital H. Their sons fell at 

 Gallipoli and on the Marne, but they 

 carry on. 



Beer and skittles is a fact and not a 

 mere saying. Skittles is played with nine 

 pins, in a bowling-alley which had origi- 

 nally a long German name. Cricket is 

 played, and tennis, and dinner parties are 

 given w T ith the formality of similar func- 

 tions in civilized lands, save that the 

 table is served by barefooted servants in 

 lava-lavas, with wreaths of flowers on 

 their heads, and there are dishes which 

 are unknown to temperate climes. 



Here one enjoys such food as the 

 coconut - crab, or robber - crab, which 

 climbs coconut palms for the fruit, lives 

 in holes in the ground, and resembles a 

 lobster in appearance and flavor ; cray- 

 fish which are similar to those of the 

 California coast; a great variety of fish, 

 which are brilliant in color and delicious 

 to the taste ; the pawpaw, or mummy 

 apple, a fruit which resembles a melon, 

 but grows on a small tree ; and sour sop, 

 a variety of custard-apple which has a 

 soft, white, subacid pulp, tasting like a 

 fruit salad with whipped cream. 



During the war there were many small 

 functions for the Red Cross, as well as a 

 play in the theater where the audience 

 sits under the stars, and several fairs to 

 which the natives contributed their shil- 

 lings. In one of these there was a native 

 market, managed by the chiefs, where 

 pigs, chickens, and coconuts were sold 

 for the cause. 



"There's a schooner in the offing 

 With her topsails shot with fire, 

 And my heart has gone aboard her 

 To the Islands of Desire." 



What does it matter if the schooner is 

 pervaded by the rancid odor of copra 

 and populous with cockroaches, if natives 

 traveling from one island to another 

 share the deck space with the sheep and 



pigs? They are still Islands of Desire. 

 The charms of the South Sea are real. 

 Those who know them best love them 

 most, and they gladly return from holi- 

 days spent at "Home" to take up island 

 life with its limitations. 



"a wide ocean, but a narrow world" 



Would you like to do that, to cut loose 

 from society, from convention, from civ- 

 ilization itself, and to sail and sail and 

 sail, dropping familiar shores and land- 

 marks ; dropping the North Star, around 

 which the whole familiar world revolves, 

 around which history revolves — there is 

 little history below the Line — and finally 

 to make a landfall on a coral isle where 

 coconut palms wave their shining fans 

 above the dazzling beaches and gentle 

 brown savages gaze curiously at the vis- 

 itors? It has been done many times; the 

 palms are there, the brown people are 

 there, but they no longer look upon white 

 men as gods descended by the rainbow 

 bridge from the heavens ; they have been 

 disillusioned. 



But let no one be deceived into believ- 

 ing that because these tiny islands are so 

 remote, so lost in the sea, and society 

 upon them so limited in numbers and so 

 cut off from civilization, that one could 

 flee to their lovely shores with the pro- 

 ceeds of crime, either stolen wealth or a 

 stolen bride, and live an idle, luxurious 

 life with the past safely concealed. 



"The Pacific is a wide ocean, but a 

 narrow world." Intercourse is not fre- 

 quent, but it is constant; everybody 

 knows everybody else, from Jaluit to 

 Tonga, from Papeete to Port Moresby. 

 Civil servants, missionaries, ship mas- 

 ters, traders keep up a system of com- 

 munication that puts Marconi to shame, 

 and just as in a small village gossip is 

 more rife and uncharitable than in a' 

 large town, so it is in these small island 

 communities. 



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