Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/32

 peaceful people, and fairly honest It is impossible to get away from taxes, and the Samoan head of a family pays 270 pounds of copra as his annual contribution to the state. This is all used to pay local chiefs, and none of it goes to the United States Communism is practiced by the people, and when a man earns $20 a month working as a servant in an American household, he is compelled to divide with members of his family, but the industrious Samoans are tiring of this plan, and resort to all sorts of subterfuges to avoid dividing their wages Pago Pago is a beautiful place for naval lieutenants to take their brides, and it was delightful to spend five hours in the American colony there, but we have no more use for it than we have for Guam, or the Philippines. The supplies come from San Francisco, and cost a great deal; coal costs $13 a ton for the cruises of the "Princeton," but our government does not receive ten cents a day income from American Samoa. In our career of conquest in Samoa, we have not robbed the Samoans; they have robbed us.

At breakfast-time on the morning of December 31, we passed Turtle island, of the Fiji group. We could see smoke ashore, and that was about all. The 180th meridian crosses one of these islands, and the captain says a native has a house on the line. In one end of his house the day of the week is Thursday, while in the other end it is Friday.

Most of the passengers are English. Among the Americans is a Chicago doctor named Beeson, who