MODERN ROBINSON CRUSOE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 2410, 28 March 1922, Page 1

MODERN ROBINSON CRUSOE.

NATIVES HAIL SAILOR AS KING.

The South Sens are still the home of romance. Two stories that have just come from Pacific Islands prove it. One tells of a man who for 30 years has lived alone on a small spot of land in the ocean between Australia and New Guinea. He has lived there, not from necessity, but! from choice. He is a voluntary Robinson Crusoe. He refuses to come away. In 1892 a ship was wrecked near his island; he and 15 other sailors saved themselves from it in open boats, and got ashore. There they had to stay for three years before a ship came within sight, of their signals. During those three years 11 of them died; their deaths were attributed to exposing and want of food they were accustomed to.

When the ship sent a boat to fetch (he survivors oil’, four of. them embarked with delight and said goodbye to the island forever. But the fifth, the old, fellow who is there still, said he could not face his fellows again after the horrors he had seen. He preferred to stay and finish Jiis life alone. All he asked was that his mates would take care to let him have food from time to time. They promised this, and left him on the shore, too dejected to wave them farewell.

Lately Mr Somerset Maugham, the i writer of so many successful novels and plays, was cruising about in tjiese waters, and was asked to call at. the island to leave its inhabitant. a bag of rice. The novelist describes him as looking like “an old and hairy hermit.” He was wearing modern clothes, which some ship had left for him, but he had let his hair and beard grow very long, and seemed to have lost'the desire for speech or companionship. He lives chiefly on boiled eggs and roast chicken. He brought some cocks and hens off the old s|jip, and they have multiplied exceedingly, lie drinks the milk of cocoa nuts, and eats the white flesh of them, lie; also catches plenty of fish. That is all he has to depend on if no food is sent to him.

But lie did not appear grateful to Mr Maugham or the senders of the bag of rice. He was silent, and surly, and seemed glad when his visitors said they must go. He Hid not enlighten them as to the natnre of the horrible Happenings on the island that had tilled him with such disgust of human nature. It is thought possible that he may have meant cannibalism. Can the .11 men have been eaten by the others instead of dying natural deaths? It; is a' dreadful thought, but only some very appalling memory could induce a man to live on a desert island „ alone for 30 years.

The other story begins also with a shipwreck. A barque took tire in the Pacific; the crew managed to reach one of the Solomon Islands. There they made friends with tile natives, and when, after seven weeks stay, they were taken off by a trading schooner, . offei-s were made to one of them, a Swede named Knut Uddgren, to stay and be king. He said he could not remain with them just therij; but when he had lo light his way to the boat through a crowd thht implored him not to go away, he shouted: “I will come back; I can’t stop now, but I will come back.”

Now he is on his way to a South Seas port, where he can sail back in the trading schooner to his “kingdom.”

He looks forward to a most enjoyable life. The climate, he says, is wonderful; there is plenty to eat, and the people are simple and loyal friends. He means to ran the island on up-to-date methods, get ships ■to call there more frequently, and make the islanders prosperous.