Perth Amboy evening news., 1921-10-14
Learn One New Thing Every Day
BULLETINS BY THE
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC sOCIE TY
FRANCE IN THE SOUTH SEAS.

while other nations have ac-
quired islands of commercial worth
and military advantage in the Pa
cific, France has accrued the islands
of and poetry-a fact en-
tirely in keeping with national char
acter," notes one of a series of bull
letins from the Washington, d. c.,
headquarters of the National Geo
graphic Society dealing with the
spheres of influence of various world
powers in Oceanica-
ITO France belong Tahiti and the
Marquesas group, immortalized by
Stevenson, Melville, and latterly pop
ularized by a rhapsodic coterie of
South Sea writer's. She holds New
Caledonia, the largest island except
for New Zealand in the South Pa
cific; and also large numbers ce the
smallest and least known of the land
points hat seem like tiny pin pricks
on a map Of the vast ocean expanse
east of Australia. All her posses
sions are south of Australia: none
of them, except the Marauesas group,
lies beyond parallels of latitude
which pierce Sydney and the north
ernmost point of Australia.
Holdings in Three Zones.
"A catalogue of French holdings,
by island groups. would sound form
liable, and q list of them would
mount into the hundreds. Yet, ex-
elusive of New Caledonia, the land
area of all the South Sea French pos
sessions is scarcely more than 1900
square miles, and they fall readily
into three zones, with a fourth, New
H~ebrides. in which France divides
sovereignty with Great Britain.
Directly asst of Queensland, Aus
tralia, is the first of these easily re-
membered zones. which is dominated
by mountainous New Caledonia a ST.
IBERIA of the South Seas, both in re-
spect to it's one time S as a penal
colony, and in its future economic
promise. Within this first circle of
French possession also are low-lying
Loyalty Islands, with their Chris
tianized Melanesian cannibals; the
Isle of Pines, with its coral caves
and gaunt, sentinel like trees: the
barron Huons, and several lesser
groups.
Northwest of New Caledonia are
the New Hebrides. jointly admins
tered by France and Great Britain.
Recently years have brought many
adventurers and ~coloniSts to the
South Seas, and the white popula-
ton of many islands is extremely
variable. AS recently as 1908 there
were only 800 French settlers and
fewer thar 200 Englishmen in the
New Hebrides. And the majority OF
the latter were missionaries.
HSiberia of the South Seas"
"Since then New Hebrides has
been recognized as a land of prom
Use. Both it's beauty and its fertility
have been magnets for Europeans.
Three crops of maize may be grown
in a year, the coffee raised there is
esteemed highly, and nowhere else
except in the Solomons are coconuts,
which spell copra commercially, so
prolific. The worst thing about the
island is the native population. Muir
derous, treacherous, vindictive they
are called. yet they have me virtue,
| that of honesty, even to a scrupulous
| r~efusaIcto regard finding as keeping
when they pick up the smallest
trinket. All such articles are placed
in the cleft OF a stick and left for
| the owner to o them.
Life for the native New Hebri-
| dean has been too much of one sweet
song. He is lazy and sensual to an
amazing degree. His neighbors oil
Tanna. to the south. are reputed
lust as ~murderous, but much more
vigorous, because living is harder TO
get. Two customs always come to
mind i'm connection with the New
Hebrides people. They wind their
babies head round and round with
cord and produce a conical. or egg
shaped skull. Their wives plight
their troth. not with a wedding ring,
but by having two front teeth
knocked out by older women,