19 MAY 1923, Page 24

FAR COUNTRIES.

" It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles." The Tuamatu Archipelago is as perilous to ships as it is beautiful, but it needs a stout heart to get there. The author is heavily bewitched by the South Seas and his enthusiasm is catching, but their magic is fading—already " the movies " have reached them ; tattooing, once their glory, is forbidden, and Christianity—in a form of select Mormonism—is introducing clothing and dogma, while violent typhoons have reduced many of them to bare coral and palms instead of the kind of Swiss-Family-Robinson vegetation of yesterday, but their glamour remains.