A SOUTH SEA KING.

Waikato Times, Volume 2656, Issue 2656, 20 July 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

A SOUTH SEA KING.

(From the San Francisco Examiner.) Gkorgb Wrhmit, who arrived in San Francisco on the steamer Australia a day or two ago from the Caroline Islands, tells the story of the sudden rise of a sailor to distinction in one of the largest islands of an archipelago, seventy-live miles West of Haweis, where Mr Wright has a tradiug store. "The sailor," said Mr Wright, "is Carl Benjamin, and he has no less than twenty-one native wives and fifty copper-coloured children. He was wrecked in the schooner Bombazine off the Lidrotie Islands nine years and floated at sea on a raft for a couple of weeks before he struck land. If you will look at a map you will find lying midway between the Tropic of Cancer and the equator thirteen dots. On some maps they appepr marked ' Thirteen islands well inhabited.' Well, it is on the biggest one of these, called by the sailor Benjamin Island, in honour of himself, that he has taken up his home. It seems odd that an island as big as this has not been got down finer by the geographers, but it remains practically a terra incognita, although it is ten by twenty odd miles in extent. " Well inhabited" means that there is quite a sprinkling of darkskinned natives residents there, as well as many men who move to and fro in their 'light native boats. Tliey eat breadfruit, bananas, cocoanuts, and catch fish, and that's the end of it. They don't work at all. " Benjamin has got to he a king in his far away home. There the white-capped waves beat against the coral shores, and Benjamin has got nothing at all to do but go swimming in the surf, talk the native gibberish, which he has learned, or 101 l under a palm tree. Sometimes he has his wives fan him while he smokes the kaziba leaf, which prows so plentifully there, and which after you get to lining it you liko better than tobacco. May be you think ho hasn't a soft thing of it. "However, Benjamin is doing somo good work there, despite the hot climate. He carried three or four books with him on his raft—t,he

last thiiifr you would expect—and he has continued to instruct the natives in the English language. Benjamin itf an American of GerniHn or Jewish descent, and is a lover of books. The first thing he did was to select an intelligent native and teach him the alphabet Ho learned rapidly, and soon began to teach it to others, and a number of them can now speak English, while the rising generation immediately around aro gradually picking up a primitive knowledge of the language. Benjamin is looked upon as a sage. All the chiefs come to him for points, and of

their own accord they have made him their reigning potentate. The chiefs, of whom there are three, are his Cabinet. Benjamin has picked out the handsomest women for wives. They esteem it a honour, and readily acknowledge him as their lord and master. He lives in a straggling bamboo village, the village of Ki, on the coral reef. His children are a sprightly, lively lot. Nobody bothers much with clothes down them in the South Pacific. Still, ho wears a little of something, as do some of tho natives, thanks to his teachings, for he has instructed them that there is no civilisation without some clothes. He is about 30 years old, and came from Newburyport, Mass, but says that he 110 longer has any desire to return to his country, and that he is perfectly contented to end his days there. He is the ouly white man, with one exception, fur hundreds of miles around. Ho has taken to wearing a string of shells around his neck like the natives, and he sometimes imitates their example and

puts dots of blue paint, got from a native shrub, on his face. This is only on state occasions, however, when there is a discussion of important questions on hand with his subordinates. " The permanent population of the island is perhaps not over six hundred or seven hundred. It is a very pretty and picturesque place, and the soil is very rich. It is indented with beautiful bays, whose shores are dotted with trees and shrubs of a tropical growth that are oftentimes covered with fragrant flowers. The island is about six hundred miles west of the Marshall Group- __________