River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1895-06-13
LITTLE ISLAND COLONIES.
Handouts Of People on specks of Land In
ne Pacific

the Pacific.
Awhile ago sixty-three persons, the
entire population of little island in
the Pacific ocean, trooped down to the
landing place wild with joy and ex-
element. They saw a small steamer
entering through a gap in the coral
reef that fripges their island and
moving slowly toward the wharf. No
wonder the fifteen families on Lord
Howe island cheered and threw up
their hats. 1t was the first time in
half year that they had heard from
the outer world.
1t happened this way: Though Lord
Howe island is about four hundred
and fifty miles out in the ocean. it is
politically part of New South Wales.
Norfolk island, several hundred miles
still further out at sea, is also,
nominally, a part of this Aus
tralian province, though she lets
both islands shift for them
selves most of the time. Four times
year the mail schooner Mary Ogilvie
has been sent out from Sydney to visit
the oceanic outposts. On her last trip
the schooner was totally wrecked on
the PERCEPTIONS coast of Norfolk island.
IL took some months for the news to
reach Sydney and the dispatch of an
other vessel, and SO it happened that
Lord Howe island was cut off from
the rest of the world for half year.
Lord Howe is one of the smallest in
habited islands of any ocean, and is
typical of the few rock scattered here
and there which give sustenance to a
handful of people. It is shaped exact
ly like d boomerang. II is eight miles
long and from one and half to two
miles wide. Its besalt sides
rise in places three thousand
feet above the surface of the
sea. 1t is nothing but a prodigious
rock thrust into the air by plutonic
forces; and one would think that peo-
pie would be willing to scratch very
hard for a living before they would
isolate themselves in such home.
But this half tropical island has ex-
traordinary verdure and beauty.
reporter of one of the Sydney papers,
who was sent out on the Thetis, says
he never saw anything so picturesque
as the towering mountains dotted here
and there with the little white cot
tages of the fifteen families who stood
cheering at the water edge.
After few days the Thetis steamed
away, five hundred miles, to Norfolk
island. to put this other speclx in the
ocean again in touch with the world
Small as it is. Norfolk is five times as
large as Lord Howe island. Everybody
has heard of the Pitcairn islanders,
but there may be many who do not
know that three-fourths of the de-
scendants of the Bounty mutineers and
their Tahitian wives no longer live on
Pitcairn, but for nearly forty years
have titled the soil of Norfolk or hunt
ed the whale around its coasts 1t
was in 1856 that the Pitcairn colony,
grown too large for their two or three
square miles of territory, were all trans
ferfed to Norfolk, where these simple,
God-fearing people were in striking
contrast with the convict colony Great
Britain had maintained there. The
last of these poor wretches had been
taken away, and an era of perez sue
ceeded the days of violence and blood
shed when the cOnvicts, treated with
incredible severity, were shot down
even in the church where they some
times took refuge.
Two years after their removal to
Norfolk island twenty-eight of the Pit
cairn natives, homesick for the be-
loved rock on which they were born,
were taken back to it, and their de-
scendants are the Pitcairn islanders of
to-day.-N. Y. Sun.