COOK ISLANDERS

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 14, 9 October 1937, Page 6

COOK ISLANDERS

Onr Own Corzespondent.)

Praise for Administrative Work MR. F. K. HUNT'S VIEW

(From

AUCKLAND, Last Night. Much impressed by the happy con tehtedness and quiet industry of the natives of Cook Islands under New Zea land administration, so far as he was aBle jfco iobserve in the course of a sojourn of ten days in Barotonga, Mr F. K. Hnnt, Auckland city coroner, expressed the opinion that the Government officials had done excellent work in improving the material circumstances without disturhing the excellent gen eral morale which had been e3tablished aniong the native inhabitants by the missionaries. The sanitation arrangements introduced, and accepted by the natives, he said, had worked wonders in the allround improvement of the health of a tropic population. At Barotonga the visitor got the feeling of universai cleanliness and readiness to do. household and field work, and. an impression of Arcadian simplicity and innocence. A Staple Folk. \ Biia impression of simplicity and Innocence, he said, had been impressed og him in the course of'his mission of helding a magisterial inqilry, the bulk of the eyidence in which was given by natives through an interpreter. To him the experience was a source of much concealed amusement by reason of the f act that the simplest of legal terms relating to ordinary misdemeanours by white folk had no counterpatt in the native vocabnlary, and had to be turned fjy the- interpreter into some picturesque xustie phrase of a descriptive nature before it could be nnderstood by the native witnesses. In the quaintness" oi these word pictures the magistrate was able to trace the deep impression for good on the native mind made by the missionaries, Thus he discovered that it was one of the laws of the missionaries, widely accepted by their chaTges, that when a young mah went walking in the evening with a young woman he must carry a torch in one hand. It was the general acceptance as law of such simple precantionary advice fpr avoiding the appearance of evii which impressed on ' the magistrate the inher ent . artleesness of the natives, More Ships Needed. By arranging for the marketing of their frnit crops through official sources the Administration had done a deal to help the material cireumstances as'well as the natnral industry of the Islanders. This had created a certain amouht of xivalry with the traders, bnt the f action was not pronounced. The Administrator, Mr S. G. Smith, had hbpes of increasing the frnit export, which was at present restricted only through shortage of shipping facilities, by the erection of cold storage space at Barotonga. At the moment the Barotongnas were feeling somewhat annoyed that the Maui Pomare, to'the cost of which they claimed to have contributed substantially,* wa* not . used in the export of their fruit, much of which went* to waste. There had been a large consignment of tomatoes by the Limerick to Auckland last week, but probably the regfc of a large cargo would have to go to waste for lack of a ship. Generally, however, the Administration was doing fine work, said Mr Hunt, in improving the prosperity of the Islanders, as well as caring for their health and. happiness. It was a work which entailed constant vigilance and organisation, for it had to be remembered that Barotonga was bnt a veTy small paTt of the Cook Group, the islands of which were scattered over an area of 80,000 square milea of the Pacific.