RECORD FAMILY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 630, 7 September 1933, Page 7

RECORD FAMILY

MAN TAKES HUNDRED WIVES ! TO SAVE A COLONY. Pioneers of all nations have earned fame and gratitude in many strange ways, but surely there is none strang- | er than that of a French gendarme j who took 100 native girls as wives to save a colony. I The hero of this remarkable epij sode is Gendarme Carasson, who was | sent to a lonely island in the Poly- ! nesian group six years ago. I Gendarme Carason has now 49 | bouncing boys and 13 girl babies, and ; he is staying on the island although i his term of office has expired. j The setting of this real-life story j is a little land of coco palms inhabited i at one time by 100 men, 500 women, i and a mere handful of children. Till . Carasson came they were a dying ■ race. j The facts — which have now been j offieially revealed — were discovered j v/hen a gunboat dropped anchor off i the islet to land a new gendarme. I Everyone was anxious to see what . Gendarme Carasson, who was bedng . relieved would look like. Although on duty "on this god-for-saken isle for six years, he has asked to remain another term. I That looked so suspicious that the gunboat had come to take him away. Gendarme Carasson made his report, but just as his successor was preparing to go ashore Carasson stepped forward briskly and saluted. i "Mon commandant," he said, "I ; have committed a grave offence j against discipline, and I ask to be : sent before a court-martial." I "You are alone. here," replied the officer. "You don't have to tell me anything you have done." Carasson then explained that when he first arrived on the island he tried to obey the rules. But the glamour of this Pacific islet finally "got him." He unbent enough to take a young spouse. They had a child. The news spread across the reef like wildfire. Three chiefs arrived and told tales of woe about the population being exterminated. For a long time Carasson refused to take any mere spouses, and then the natives threatened to kill him if he: did no.t. He finally agreed on one condition. He would take the girls as native v wives, provided that their fathers would plant fifty coco trees for every child, for France needed more coconuts. "I feel that I would like to stay, Gendarme Carasson concluded. He was allowed to stay.