Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1898-06-30

S.N| anew. Tragedy
was often the end
OF adventure, and then, too, none but
the most venturesome or the most
abandoned of white men sought to
live among the wild islanders in the
days, not so far remote, when the
missionary had not yet introduced his
stucco churches and taught the ma
tives the price of an axe or a handful
OF ship i biscuit. This tale of
one of the forgotten tragedies is
drawn from an official document on
which forty years of slumbering in a
forgotten pigeonhole has served to
dim the writing and to dull the i'm
print of the lion and the unicorn with
which British Consul made the pa
per official. To write an account of q
murder on sixteen sheets of Govern
ment blue stationery, to attach @ seal
with the royal arms-that may pass
sometimes as just the same as aveng-
ing it.
Suvarrow is as lonely a group of
desolation as it is possible to find in
that scantily travelled region of the
South Seas which lies to the eastward
of Samoa and before reaching such
populous centres as Tahiti and Raro-
tonga. Other islands have the pic
turesque features of towering noun
tains, yerdure clad to their summit
crags, the grace of waving cocoanut
palms fringing every beach with giant
leaves. Suvarrow is but ring of
sand banks skirting a lagoon filled
with coral groves; the only trees, the
stunted pandanus, set on group of
prop-like roots. Other islands have
their peopling of brown-skinned folk,
possibly treacherous, and always to
be treated as interiors by that lovely
creature, the beachcomber of these
seas, yet human in their desire for
gaudy toys and the timed goods on
which the white man feeds. Suvarrow
Is marked on the charts as uninhab-
tied and, therefore, is not n port of
call for the vagrant whaler in his
search for sperm, the trader or the
blackbirder. Yet now and again little
island colonies may be found on the
bare sards of the atoll, for in the la
goon grow the pearl oyster and the
beche-de-mer, which Cinnamon eat,
and on the sands great turtles come
to lay their eggs by night. Hence
beachcombers mysteriously wander
ing beyond the confines of civilization
at odd times camp on the bare islets
in search of the wealth of tortoise
shell, pearl shell and trepang the sea
affords. This is the story of one such
colony on the desolate atoll of Su-
varrow, tale whose events were com
plete in 1858, but have never yet been
made known beyond the combers of
South Sea beaches.
In the early months of 1857 Thomas
Charlton, of Martha's Vineyard, run
away hand from Nantucket whaler,
was living on the island of Manahiki.
When he was fishing one day in a
canoe outside the coral reef sudden
squall carried him and his party of
islanders out of sight of land and left
them adrift and undirected upon the
ocean. South Sea tradition is mass
of tales of such involuntary voyaging.
With such help as a sailor could get
from dead reckoning and n knowledge
of the set of the trade winds. Charlton
managed to bring his canoe to Suvar-
row and there established his colony
of gentle Manahikians. In addition
to his wife Sumaria, Charlton, of Tamu,
as he was called in the liquid speech
Of the islands, numbered in the census
of his settlement on the sands eight
souls. Here and his wife Kokorariki
ern island away to windward of Tahiti,
and, as the event proved, n shrewd
and constituencies woman), Kaitai
and his wife, and the single men
Ngere, Taarau, Volta, Otea, and
Vaimau. With true Polynesian apathy,
these people made the best they could
of a bad affair, built them houses near
a source of water, and took up the
thread of life where it had been broken
by the squall at Manahiki, scores of
leagues away. There was food on the
island and water-that is enough for a
colony of folk whole needs are simple
They were destined to live not long
alone. Captain Sam Sustenance was
sailing those seas in his topsail
schooner Dart. Captain Sustenance
might not be classed among the elect.
He was not a good man. even accord
ing to the standard of these waters,
where the only good thing afoat was
the "society's brig, said society be-
ing the London Missionary Society,
which has pioneered the South Pacific
since Cooks voyages of discovery.
But Sustenance was such a man as
best suited the early times of sea
trading, enough of mere merchant
man to satisfy the curiosity Of the in
frequent naval vessels cruising among