SAVAGE YACHTSMEN

Hokitika Guardian, 24 September 1926, Page 2

SAVAGE YACHTSMEN

(By Jack McLaren, Author of “My Crowded Solitude.’) i South Pacific- natives don’t go in . much for sport, but at one of the atolls i of tiie Marshall Group a little while ago ■ there was a tremendous outbreak of . sailing canoe racing. Seeing pictures of a Cowes Regatta in an old London newspaper which ; had drifted there somehow, the head chief, a most dignified old person with a fondness for imitating the doings 1 of Europeans, decided that if white men went sailing, not to catch, fish or anything, hut just to see which was the fastest boat, then it was his job to organise something of the kind. Accordingly, he ordered the people ■ to assemble on the beach' one afternoon, and then set one of the village canoes against his own in a. rac-e round the lagoon. At first the people regarded it as a lot of effort for nothing, and were not at all enthusiastic. But the chief’s c-anoe was beaten, and when the chief rebuked his skipper a great interest awoke. ■ The villagers took sides and violent arguments arose as to what would have happened if the canoe had not taken so wide a turn at the reef, or had lain a little closer to the wind, and so forth. From this they came to challenging one another, and next day canoes were racing alt about the lagoon, and the beac-h was covered with excited spectators, with the pleased chief sitting under a great red umbrella, accompanied by bis wives and retinue. There were no prizes; no one had thought of it. But that did not matter. The spirit had been aroused. The uproar was terrific, the c'rowd on the beach yelling encouragement and abuse, and venting great bursts of laughter, whenever a canoe capsized, and the men in the canoes shouting war-cries and songs as they raced. And so for a week they kept it up. the while doing none of their usual tasks, suc-h as gathering coconuts; and I have no doubt they would be at it if the chief had not sent them back to work. “I fear, sir,” he said to me gravely in his own tongue, “that we should not do everything that white men do.”