formaldehyde difficulty, he went off to see the local pharmacist and promptly 
brought back the promise that all available, aboiit a gallon, would be deli- 
vered to the ship first thing Monday morning, April 29. 
When I inquired of Mr. Brotherson how he came to be here, he replied, 
"It all started in I85I with the Australian Gold Rush when my grandfather on 
my father's side, Peter Broderson v;as his Danish name, got the gold fever 
along with many others. Though sixty of them boarded a ship somewhere in 
the States, they got shipwrecked in the Tuamotus, Only 7 survived, and 
some means continued to Tahiti, and lastly Raiatea. ^t is quite a tragic 
stoiy, because two of my grandfather's friends and shipmates committed sui- 
cide a few years later. Jfy grandfather, badly shaken by the loss of his 
friends, found relief in hard work for a Gerraan firm trading in the Islands. 
He married my grandmother who was the daughter of a ship captain by the name 
of Hunter. Of that imion 9 children were born. Jfy father, born in 1888, 
was the third. This was a few years before the Island of Raiatea became a 
French Protectorate, 
"At the age of I4 ny father was sent to school in the States where he 
stayed for 12 years. After he finished school, he worked first in Iowa, 
and later in San Francisco, Aq-v/ays he wanted to come back to his family 
and these lovely islands which he never forgot. He did come back in his 26th 
year in 1914 > and married that very same year Elizabeth Horley, the daughter 
of an English stone mason. Born in 1918, I was the first of their 10 
children. 
"As for myself, I have not much to say, except that I must thank God 
because I was born in this beautiful Island, and I do pray to Him that it 
vrill stay this way for ever. We have been visited by many tourists from all 
over the vrorld in these last few years, a big Cinema Company which is not the 
best thing for these I^ands, and of course various government officials," 
