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Hokitika Guardian, 28 May 1921, Page 1

SOUTH SEAS “VENICE.” TOKIO, March 17 A party of Japanese scientists ami odicers who have returned to Tokio from an expedition to the mysterious ruins in the Namatol Peninsula, on the east coast of Ponape, South Sea Islands, state that there are indications that these islands were peopled by Japanese many centuries ago. “The castle at Namatol,” says a member of the party in the Jpan Times and Mail, “represents the toil of thousands of men in an ago when no other stone buildings existed within hundreds of miles. “The ruins are about 1,000 feet long and 100 feet wide. Within the heavy walls the sea ebbs and flows through what were once well laid-out gardens and courts. The tropical jungle brushes against the crumbling walls.” Pound, perforated shell-coins which have been found in the ruins are other traces of what the scientists describe as a “teeming population of scientific builders of a South Pacific Venice.” Ponape is in the Caroline group of islands to which the cable island of Yap, ceded to Japan under the Peace Treaty, also belongs.