found the House of Representatives building, the Secretariat, Treasury, Judiciary, Legal, Audit and Public Works Departments.

The principal occupations for the available labour force of the islands are provided by the open-cast phosphate mining at Ocean Island, work on the copra plantations in the Line Islands, and Government service. Some labour, however, has secured employment overseas, notably in the phosphate workings at Nauru, and with a fishing company and agricultural enterprises in the New Hebrides. The Marine Training School at Tarawa had produced four crews who were employed by overseas shipping lines at the end of 1968. Apart from a very small number of skilled or professional expatriates, all workers are Gilbertese and Ellice Islanders to whom, for the most part, work is a profitable way of seeing new islands and of increasing prevailing income levels on their home islands. The bulk of the population is engaged in copra production on a subsistence basis.

During 1968 the British Phosphate Commissioners at Ocean Island employed 592 persons of whom 513 were Gilbert and Ellice Islanders. A further 742 workers from the islands were employed by the Commissioners at Nauru. Estimated numbers in other occupations are: Government service 1,505, and Local Government approximately 506 officials; commerce 651; copra plantations 277. There is only one registered trade union operating at present.

Agriculture is virtually non-existent in the islands due to the poor quality of the soil, which is composed largely of coral sand and rock fragments. The major part of all islands, except Ocean and some of the Phoenix group, is covered with coconut palms which provide the islands with an important source of food and drink, and with copra, which is their only cash crop. In 1968, out of a record total production of 6,632 tons of copra, 4,335 tons came from Island producers and 2,297 tons from the Line Islands Plantations. Sea fishing is excellent but on a small scale. Phosphate of lime is mined at Ocean Island by the British Phosphate Commissioners. Livestock is limited to pigs and poultry. There is little useful timber.

The principal domestic exports are copra, mainly shipped to the United Kingdom, and phosphate (untreated). In 1968 6,071 tons of Copra were exported and the production of phosphate on Ocean Island amounted to 523,450 tons. The values and origins or destinations of imports and exports in 1968 (actual figures) were:

Britain
Australasia

Exports
SA

Imports
$A

A Copra Board is responsible for all purchases of copra and sales overseas. Internal purchases are made through the agency of a wholesale society and co-operative societies. Most imports and sales of retail goods are handled by this Wholesale Society and the co-operatives. The economic life of the indigenous population is based on the co-operative movement. At 31st December 1968 there were 49 co-operative societies (mainly consumer-marketing societies, but including four consumer societies and three secondary societies) having a total membership of 18,332. The volume of private trading is small.

The principal ports are at Betio Islet (Tarawa), and Ocean Island. Small ships of up to 10 feet draught may enter the harbour at Betio, whilst larger vessels drawing up to 28 feet anchor in the lagoon and are serviced by barges. At Ocean Island there is a cantilever through which phosphate is loaded, and barge and boat loading facilities are also provided by the British Phosphate Commissioners. Vessels of up to 30 feet draught can enter the lagoon at Funafuti, while at Christmas Island vessels anchor or lie at buoys outside the lagoon. During 1968 a total of 63 overseas vessels called at ports in the territory. Of this number, 27 (with an estimated tonnage of 148,116 tons) were vessels owned or chartered by the British Phosphate Commissioners at Ocean Island.

There are two airports, located at Tarawa and Funafuti, used for scheduled commercial flights. The airport at Christmas Island is now only used for emergency landings or by military aircraft. The aerodrome at Canton Island has now been closed and all facilities and personnel have been withdrawn. A weekly service from Suva, Fiji, to Tarawa via Nadi and Funafuti is operated with HS 748 aircraft by Fiji Airways Ltd. Airfields for an internal service have been completed at Abemama and Tabitevea in the Gilbert Islands.

The Gilbert and Ellice Islands Broadcasting Service (call signs VSZ1 and VSZ2) transmits daily in the medium and shortwave bands from 0800 to 0930 hours GMT and 1945 to 2100 hours GMT. The morning programme is devoted mainly to light music, a news relay and record requests. Broadcasts in the evening period are in English, Gilbertese and Ellice.

A three-year development plan for the period 1st April 1965 to 31st March 1968 provided for projected expenditure of $A2,796,694, including £Stg. 720,000 from Colonial Development and Welfare Funds. The balance of the plan was financed by grants given by the United Kingdom under the Overseas Service Aid Scheme; allocations from local funds, from current revenues or from reserves; funds provided by international agencies (World Health Organisation, UNICEF and UNTAB); grants from the British Committee of the Freedom from

Hunger Campaign (OXFAM); and funds provided by technical assistance programmes of Britain and Australia. An allocation of £Stg. 660,000 was made from C.D. & W. funds for the period 1st April 1968 to 31st March 1970.

Income tax is levied on chargeable income on a sliding scale rising from 7 cents per $2 on the first $400 to $1.50 cents per $2 on income over $20,000. No super tax is payable. Companies pay 22 per cent on all chargeable income except for shipping companies and insurance companies, which pay 3.6 cents and 7.2 cents per $2 respectively. Island Councils have a wide range of rating powers and also levy a landowners tax (based on area and fertility), licence fees and other dues. Import duties, tax on phosphates and export duties on copra are the other main sources of revenue.

At 30th November 1968, there were 13,292 children between the ages of six and 16 receiving primary education. Thirty-three primary schools are maintained from Government and local government funds, and 240 are grant-aided and 14 unaided. Primary education is free. At Tarawa the Government maintains a co-educational boarding school with an enrolment of 140 boys and 82 girls, and a Teacher's Training College with 28 males and 30 females.

HISTORY

The Gilbertese, who are a Micronesian people, appear to have two separate stories about the origin of their race which, although interwoven by the passage of time and the handing down of verbal traditions, are easily distinguishable. The earlier of the two tells of a creator, Nareau, and a pantheon of gods and goddesses created by him from the void. This tradition appears to have become interwoven with a 'Tree of Life' myth, based upon Samoa, with stories of a cannibal race practising skull-worship on the sacred mountain of Maungatabu. The Tree had its own pantheon of heroes and heroines and they, as well as those of the Nareau creation story, are the sub-deities of Gilbertese traditional beliefs. These stories tell of civil disturbances in Samoa; of the breaking of the "Tree of Samoa and the disposal of its people to the Gilbert Islands; and of their meeting there with a people of similar ancestry. They create the impression that the Gilbertese believe their islands to have been inhabited before their arrival from Samoa' by a people holding related traditions. Efforts to trace any substantial reference to the Samoan deity Tangaroa have been unsuccessful. This seems to indicate that the disposal preceded his rise to pre-eminence in Samoan religion, which would place the migration to the Gilbert Islands somewhere between A.D. 1000 and 1300.

The settlement of the Ellice Islands is no better authenticated than that of the Gilberts. The people and the language are both Polynesian, the latter showing Tonga and Niuean, as well as Samoan, affinities. Tradition speaks of Samoa as the original home but the stories do not appear to have as much detail as those of the Gilberts and it is probable that the islands were settled accidentally by parties drifting westwards from Samoa or adjacent island groups before the south-east trade wind. Curiously enough, some of the heroes of the Gilbertese pantheon appear in Ellice stories and, since Tangaroa receives scant mention, it is just possible that some at least of the Ellice settlers left Samoa at the same time as the Gilbertese and took with them their traditional stories. There are also stories of marauders from the Gilbert Islands and from Tonga.

From the earliest days the Gilbertese have waged a dour fight against starvation. Their islands are infertile coral atolls, periodically ravaged by droughts,

and the coconut is the ubiquitous provider, eked out by laboriously-cultivated coarse edible tubers, pandanus, and breadfruit. This simple subsistence agriculture has always been a grim task, one which made land the prize of love and war. But while this struggle went on ashore they were able, in their swift, wellconstructed canoes, to fish their lagoons and ocean shores, and their limited navigation served them well enough on their occasional inter-island voyages of depredation. From this background the cautious character of the people grew. The Ellice people, on islands little touched by drought, where vegetation, though limited, is far more luxuriant than in the Gilberts, show most of the delighful and carefree traits of the Polynesian race. Living on small islands they developed more of a communal spirit than the Gilbertese and, possible because their populations were small, they appear to have lived a comparatively peaceful existence, except when marauders came to their shores.

The European discovery of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands dates from the 16th century; it is thought that Christmas Island and Nonouti in the Gilbert group were sighted in 1537 by Grijalva's mutinous crew on their disastrous voyage across the Pacific to New Guinea, and it is probable that Mendana was in Ellice waters on his voyage to the Solomons in 1567-8. Quiros is thought to have discovered Butaritari in the Northern Gilberts in 1606.

After the probable early Spanish sightings, further discovery had to await the latter part of the 18th century and the first quarter of the 19th century. After Captain Byron's visit to Nikunau, in H.M.S. Dolphin in 1765, the remaining 24 islands in the group were discovered largely as an unintended result of increasing commercial activity in the Pacific. The last islands to be discovered were, in the Ellice, Niutao and Vaitupu and, in the Gilberts, Onotoa and Beru in 1826.

From the early days of their discovery until about 1870, the waters of the Gilbert Islands were a favourite sperm-whaling ground and the crews of these whalers occasionally deserted and settled ashore. One of the first Europeans to settle in the Gilbert Islands landed about 1837 and the number steadily grew. Trading ships began to visit the islands regularly from 1850 onwards. Although at first trade merely consisted of bartering curios for European luxuries, trade in coconut oil began about 1860 and in ten or twenty years gave way to the sale of copra.

In 1900, by chance, the late Sir Albert Ellis noticed in a Sydney office a sample of rock from German-annexed Nauru and identified it as a piece of valuable phosphate. An expedition was speedily sent by the Pacific Islands Company to the neighbouring Ocean Island to see whether this island also contained the same rock. Although, by agreement with Germany, Ocean Island was at this time within the British sphere of influence, it had not yet been annexed. The representatives of the Pacific Islands Company discovered that the soil of Ocean Island was almost pure phosphate rock and they were able to obtain from the inhabitants a concession to mine it.

The Reverend A. W. Murray of the London Missionary Society, from Samoa, visited the Ellice Islands in May 1865, placing Samoan pastors on the islands; the new faith was universally embraced and all aspects of island life not conforming with the strict tenets of these pastors were cast aside. In 1870 the Society carried Christianity northward and placed Samoan pastors at Arorae, Tamana, Onotoa and Beru. Roman Catholic missionaries landed in the Gilbert Islands in 1888, and Roman Catholicism has now spread to all the Gilberts

except the two most southerly, Tamana and Arorae, which are still Protestant strongholds.

In 1892, Captain Davis of H.M.S. Royalist, on behalf of Queen Victoria, proclaimed at Abemama a British protectorate in the Gilbert Islands. H.M.S. Royalist then visited other Gilbert Islands to raise the flag and Captain Davis was intructed to visit the Ellice Islands to ascertain the wishes of the inhabitants. After the latter had made it clear that they wanted British rule, Captain Gibson of H.M.S. Curacao was instructed to proceed to the Ellice Islands and to declare a protectorate. Captain Gibson visited each island where, after a special meeting at which the chief and people of the island had signified their assent, the British flag was hoisted. The headquarters of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Protectorate was established at Tarawa and district magistrates were assigned to the various islands. A simple code of laws was drawn up based on earlier mission legislation, and the councils of old men were transformed into native courts to administer them. With peace in the groups the people were gathered into orderly villages and an era dawned of simple administration through the Native Governments guided by a very small number of European officers. In 1915, after consultations and at the wish of the Native Governments, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands were annexed by an Order in Council which came into effect on 12th January 1916.

From 1942 to 1943 the Gilbert Islands were occupied by the Japanese. The Administration established a temporary headquarters at Sydney, Australia, which was transferred to Funafuti when United States forces occupied the Ellice group. From there, the Government controlled a war-time administration over the Ellice, Phoenix and Line Islands until, in November 1943, the United States forces drove the Japanese from the Gilberts. Officers of the Administration accompanying the military forces set up headquarters on Tarawa.

LAND POLICY

Since 1917 the sale of land to non-natives has been prohibited and leases may not be taken out without the consent of the Resident Commissioner, or, if the lease is to be for a period in excess of 99 years or for an area exceeding five acres, without the approval of the High Commissioner. Before 1892 there were, of course, no legal restrictions on alienation and between 1892 and 1917 limited alienation was permitted. Fortunately, in the Gilbert and Ellice groups there was no serious loss of land to the islanders during these periods. An insignificant area now remains alienated. Most of this is owned by Missions and is used for social purposes. Fanning and Washington Islands (in the Line Group) are virtually the only freehold property and are operated as commercial copra plantations by a private company. Christmas Island is owned and worked as a copra plantation by the Government.

CONSTITUTION

The Gilbert and Ellice Islands are one of the territories under the jurisdiction of the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific whose headquarters are at Honiara in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. In 1915 the High Commissioner was empowered by Order in Council to make ordinances, to provide for the administration of Government, provided that such ordinances should not take away or affect any rights secured to Islanders by treaties made on behalf of previous sovereigns, and that in making ordinances he should respect any native laws or customs unless they were injurious to the natives' welfare.