Puff on the Kermadec Islands

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 154, 8 June 1886, Page 2

Puff on the Kermadec Islands

The French absolutely deoline to cede Rapa to Great Britian ! There you go ! The most valuable island of the lot, the Malta of the Pacific, lost to us, all through the blind obstinaoy of some of the colonies about the New Hebrides ! Never mind, old man ! Don't cut up rough I We've got the Kermadecs! Yes, we have, and a precious lot of good they are to us ! Uninhabitable volcanoes, surrounded by dangerous rocks ! Nothing worth having there, except the droppings of some beastly shags and seagulls! But I don't suppose the Government really want the Kermadecs for the sake* of -the guano ! That's only a surmise of the Admiralty, who can't understand what our little game is ! Oh no, it's all part of this blessed annexation scheme I The Kermadeos are on the way to Samoa ! How did they get such a name ? What does it mean ? Kermadeo? It was the name of a worthy Breton oaptain under La Perouse, the great French navigator! It's still an established name in Brittany ! Then, did the French discover the Islands ? Certainly they did, and the New Hebrides too ! No, not really ! Why. La Pereuse's expedition was lost at the New Hebrides in 1788, and it was the search after it that led to the exploration of the whole Pacifio ! Sic vos non vobis [ A hundtodtyean later, we refuse to let the French take the New Hebrides, but we take the Kermadecs.