Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1904-05-27
AMONG THE PACIFIC ISLANDS.
Californian Has Travelled Thousands
Of Miles Within Four Years.


just returned to America for six
weeks vacation in his Southern Cali.
iornia home, after four years nat.
ural history collecting tour of the
islands OF the Pacific, Alvin Scale, a
Stanford graduate and naturalist, is
full of interesting accounts of his un.
usual experiences, particularly during
the last two years, when he travelled
2l,O00 miles and gathered up more
tnan 5000 chronological and natural
history specimens for the great Bishop
Museum of Honolulu.
Scale had been all through the Aleu-.
tian Islands and the Siberian Islands
before he became attached to the
Bishop Museum as a collecting natu.
ralist. And since that affiliation he
has been, in the sequence named, all
over the Hawaiian group the Ladrone
group, the Philippine group, the Japan
group, the Society group, the Pomota
group, the Marquesas group, the As
trail group, the isolated island of Rapa,
the Gambler group, Pitcairn Island
the Tahiti group, the Cook group,
New Zealand, Australia, Lord Home
Island, Norfolk Island, the New Heb.
rides group, the Solomon group, and
the Samoan group.
On the Solomon Islands, where can.
nibalism and real savagery still exist
Scale found King Wort resigned to
death and already living apart in a
special village because of frightfully
poisoned leg infected by a poisonous
fish. Scale happened to have an anti
dote prepared for contact with just
such fish, and treated the king and
cured him. King Wort quit his worry,
made Scale notable, decorated him
with royal insignia, and did him vari-
Gus honors, and gave him many val
liable articles as museum trophies,
which British and other representa-
tiveS had in vain tried to purchase
for years. Wort had fifty wives and a
great many slave women, all the
slaves having been regularly captured
by the raids in the Island of Bougain-
vile, which is as large as the entire
Hawaiian group, is thickly populated
with thousands of natives of various
tribes, but has no white men. Six
years ago Wort put to death twenty
five of his slave women to do honor
to his brother, who had just died.
Scale says that the Solomon Islands
when opened up to development by
white men will greatly surpass the
combined Hawaiian and Fiji groups as
sugar producers, as they have thou
sands upon thousands of acres of fin
est sugar lands. But there are not
yet half a dozen white men on the
entire group, because the natives dis
like the whites. The Society Islands
he considers the most important in
the Pacific by reason of their position
and prospective resources.
King Wort gave Scale an ancient
war canoe, forty-five feet long, carved
with twenty-four gods and made to
carry twenty warriors. He also gave
him very rare money loak made en-
tirely of little red shells. A queen in
the Marquesas group gave him an I'M
named and extinct red bird treasured
for many years.
Scale brought to Honolulu a great
many new fish and birds, three stone
and several wooden gods, the finest
collection of native pottery ever Sc
cured from the Solomon group, 100
war spears, scores of bows and ar
rows, and many wonderfully interest
ing photographs of native types, GUS
toms, and island scenes of rare pict-
uresque beauty, and graphic accounts
of wonderful volcanoes, one of which
on Tanna Island has been constantly
active for 100 years, exploding every
fifteen minutes with grand pyrotechnic
displays.-San Francisco Chronicle.