Ocean Island Mystery.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 July 1921, Page 3

Ocean Island Mystery.

PUZZLE OF MIGHTY RUINS. Japanese scientists have made a remnrlyihle discovery in the Caroline Islands. They have discovered in the volcanic island of Poiiape titanic architectural remains, and they say that the work was the work of Japanese of centuries ago.

Scholars in England, if not in Japan, knew that there were much remains in the Caroline group, hut the achievements were never till now attributed to the Japanese. The islands were discovered by the Portuguese nearly 400 years ago, taken in 1686 by the Spaniards, and sold by them in 1890 to the Germans from whom the Japanese have now taken them over under the Peace Treaty. We have heard much of late of tli” mysterious gigantic sculptures of Easter Island, and the mystery is yet unsolved: but this puzzle of the Caroline is greater still. For the Japanese report that the architectural work on Ponapo is of the most prodigious character. There is a castle there, they say, that must have taken thousands of men years to build in an age when there were no other stone buildings within hundreds of miles. They tell us of ruins 1000 feet in length, and 100 feet wide, within whose massive walls the sea ebbs and flows through what were once magnificent gardens. Without is the tropical jungle-, within a veritable Venice of the Pacific. This mystery will have to he cleared up How came such tremendous works there ? How did tlfip islands dcriv wlmt must have been a teeming population? When did those people acquire, their art and what became of them. W’e shall he anxious to hear more ; about the suggestion that the population was Japanese. That, at any rate is an entirely new story. And it. is all highly romantic.