PUTTING OUT THE SUN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4494, 20 November 1922, Page 4

PUTTING OUT THE SUN.

(By Jack McLaren, the Soutlhi Sea Novelist. In certain villages of* the Solomon Group the eclipse of the sun will have been credited to the machinations of sorcerers, probably with mur 1 - derous' results. Severia] times has one tribe attacked another in the belief that bhe enemy had employed sorcerers to attempt to “put out the sun” in revenge for an injury, chiefly the stealing of women. In the last instance many men on both sides were killed, a village was burnt, and only the opportune arrival of a gunboat prevented the trouble from spreading to other tribes. In the Gilbert and Ellice groups obscuration of the sun is regarded by husbands as certain indication bf the unfaithfulness of their wives—in thought at least. But punishment is none the less severe on tlhat account. The pigmies of the mountainous interior look upon them as signs that male births will greatly outnumber female births during the following year.

While the aborigines of Northern Australia are strangely incurious- and non-superstitious ip the matter, their neighbours:, the Torres Strait islanders, regard unusual celestial phenomena as harbingers of terrestrial disaster.

Threading a reef-strewn, passage in a pearling lugger one moonless night, I was aroused from my bunk by the sails banging in a manner which indicated that the vessel was out of control.

Rushing up I found the deck deserted, the lugger right up in the wind, apd the whole of my Torres Island crew below, deathrwailing and crying that the end of the world was coming. I could get no explanation until I dragged one of the men on deck, where he pointed' tp the clear and starry sky. It was the first appearance of Halley’s Comet in those regions !