Word: sikaiana
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...Previously reported paradise: Sikaiana, in the Stewart Islands (TIME, June...
Legends piled up fast. One told of a sea-crashed pilot who was found in his little rubber boat, paddling hotly with his bare hands toward Sikaiana and fighting off rescuers. Another related that a certain patrol-plane crew, overcome by tales of beauty and hospitality, got off course somehow and had to sit down for repairs at, of all places, Sikaiana. Then airmen of a rival service learned what had happened...
...Sikaiana stories were not harmed in the least by the fact that relatively little is known of the Stewart group. In peacetime only schooners in the copra trade call there. Sikaiana, one and a quarter miles long, is the largest of the five islands sur rounding a broad lagoon. But even its exact geographical location is disputed: A 1933 report indicated that it lies some 13 miles east of where the charts show...
...coldhearted skeptics who sought to debunk Sikaiana with dry research got the shock of their lives from the Navy Hydrographic Office's staid, unromantic Sailing Directions for the Pacific Islands: "The natives are Polynesians and have remarkably light colored skins. They are handsome and have a splendid physique...
...another, the U.S. public will probably hear more of Sikaiana...