John Griffin

313 Anolani St. Honolulu, Hawaii    January 8, 1969   Tonga, Polynesia’s last kingdom, begins with lovely circles in the sea. Some are simple coral reefs, mostly washed by milk-green tides and foaming surf with sandy islands in the golden-necklace pattern of South Pacific atolls. Others are high islands, forested volcano tops like weathered jade rimmed with sand and reef. In cold statistics, there are some 150 islands (only 36 inhabited) in three main groups running 200 miles north-south almost down to the Tropic of Capricorn. You see relatively few of these islands on the 500-mile flight southwest from Samoa. Unseen far off towards Melanesian Fiji, for example, is volcanic Niuafoou, nicknamed “Tin Can Island” because mail for passing tourist ships has been sealed in biscuit tins and carried out through the surf. Nor, as you look down on the endless blue swells, is it apparent that this pattern of low atoll and high island rests near the west rim of one of the Pacific’s greatest depths, the Tongs Trench. What you do get is