Word: tuamotu
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...South Pacific's frigate birds have not the high standards of U.S. postmen through storm and sleet and snow and dark of night. But, in their slapdash way, the frigate birds do pretty well. For centuries, the islanders in France's remote Tuamotu archipelago have used the frigate bird to carry messages from island to island, putting their faith in the tropical laziness that prompts the birds to fly no farther than the nearest island. If the mail is not always delivered on time and seldom with any privacy, at least it costs nothing and there...
...101st day of the 4,300-mile voyage, the Kon-Tiki piled up on a reef just off a lovely island in the Tuamotu Archipelago. Three or four days before that, friendly natives had paddled out to visit the raft. Where, they asked knowingly in sign language, was the engine? When they realized there was none, their faces expressed pure 20th Century astonishment...
...right. Last week, the men on the big log raft (modeled after an ancient Peruvian balsa) sighted the first land they had seen since leaving Callao, Peru, three months and 4,100 miles ago (TIME, April 21). It was the island of Puka Puka, easternmost atoll of the Tuamotu archipelago. To the six Scandinavian scientists on the Kon-Tiki, the smudge of land was proof of their theory that ancient, pre-Inca Indians might have traveled across the Pacific from Peru to Polynesia on big, homemade rafts, carried by the south equatorial current. Sailing on, as the Indians may have...
Congo. That was last August. Soon other colonies followed: the five dots of French territory in India; in the Pacific, New Caledonia, Tahiti, the Gambier Islands, Tuamotu, the Marquesas and Austral Islands...
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