ROMANCE IN HAWAII

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 52, 24 November 1937, Page 7

ROMANCE IN HAWAII

Princess to Marry Frenchman When a dark-eyed Hawaiian princess, Papaleaioina, spurred her horse along the beach at Waikiki, she rode straight tnto the heart of a Erench traveller, Captain Eric de Bisschop, and the romance that began that day in tho • southern seas will culminate soon in a marriage in Paris. Shipwreck and starvation for Captain de Bisschop, .and a royal lineage almost as lofig as time pattern the background of this love affair. Captain de Bisschop is now on his way home from Honolulu, sailing a catamaran he built himself. On his way across the Pacific more than a year ago the captain and his sole companion ran into the doldrums. They had to watch. their food supply dwindle to nothing. They began to eafc candles. Por two weeks they kept alive on them, until they Teached the leper island of Makogai, where their boat was smashed on the rocks. They were able to get passage to Honolulu, and there, on the beach, they set about buiiding their catamaran. They thought they would have it finished and be setting sail again in four months. But that was before tho lovely Polynesian princess stopped to inquire how their work was progressing. She is a talented artist. On the walls of the catamaran 's cabin she painted pictures of her palm-fringed islands and of the dusky maidens over whom she xules. She gave the captain also a portrait she painted of herself. In this she wears the fragrant white tiare blossom, floWer of romance in the islands, on the right side of her brow. Now she wSars the floWer on her left. It is an age-old tradition among the island people that the tiare should be transposed when she becomes engaged. The princess traces her ancestry back through the royal Hawaiian line almost to the mythological King Wakea and Queen Papa. In the 17th century one Thomas Cummins married Queen- Papaleaiaina, and the family became Europeanised. To-day, in Honolulu society, she uses her English namc, Constance Constablc. John Gonstable, E.A., was one of her forebears.