PACIFIC ISLANDS UNDER JAPANESE MANDATE 



597 



Photograph by Junius B. Wood 



AN ALTAR OR TOMB IN THE) SUN TEMPLE OP NANMATAL, PONAPE : CAROLINE ISLANDS 



Beneath this altar there was once a large room with an underground passageway leading 

 outside the walls of the mysterious city (see text, page 607). 



on a side path through an opening in the 

 brush. 



In a little cleared space stood the 

 "men's hotel." It was a roof of thatch, 

 open on all sides. Fastened to the poles 

 supporting the roof, about four feet from 

 the ground, was a braided hammock-like 

 floor of fibers and leaves. Cracking the 

 coconut on the fringe of rocks which pro- 

 tected the hotel from the crowding jun- 

 gle, he climbed to the unsteady floor, 

 squatted on his haunches, and started the 

 evening feast, his day's work done. 



Down at the foot of the path where 

 the narrow bay separates the main island 

 from the rocky head of Chokach (one of 

 33 islets surrounding Ponape), half a 

 dozen outriggers were tied to the man- 

 groves. Other bare feet were coming 

 along. An athletic young man, a wreath 

 of flowers on his head and a shirt of 

 fiber strings covering his hips, untied one 

 of the canoes, The little narrow hull, 

 hollowed from a single tree trunk, was 

 so narrow that his knees rubbed as he sat 

 on the cross-bar. 



"Want go Chokach?" he offered. 



"I'm Pingelap man," he vouchsafed, as 

 his narrow paddle drove the canoe across 

 the quiet water. 



Hospitable, good-natured, and easy- 

 going, the Ponape natives have a temper 

 which flames into wild revolt when 

 pressed too hard. The first Fourth of 

 July revolution against the Spaniards, in 

 which the governor and four others were 

 killed, a carpenter being the only one able 

 to escape to the warship Maria Molina, 

 was precipitated when a road boss forced 

 the natives to pick up rubbish with their 

 hands. 



The next revolution, in 1891, started 

 over, the rivalry between an American 

 mission church and a new one established 

 by the Spaniards near Metalanim Har- 

 bor, on the east side of the island. The 

 natives disposed of an officer and twenty- 

 five soldiers who interfered in the relig- 

 ious competition, and when a larger force 

 of two officers and fifty soldiers was 

 sent from the garrison at Ponape their 

 worldly worries ended with similar 

 celerity. 



A transport with 3,000 soldiers came 

 from the Philippines. It went ashore on 

 the reef outside of Metalanim, and in the 

 ensuing melee, according to the widow of 

 the American adventurer who later pi- 

 loted the transport off the reef, three 

 natives and 1,500 soldiers went to an- 



