IT has not; come to be generally known that
about forty-five years ago the United States
acquired formal and actual possession of
certain islands in the mid-Pacific, lying
within and along the equatorial belt, and
reaching westward nearly to the East-ern
Hemisphere.
In 1856 it had already come to pass that
certain voyagers in those regions, mostly
American whalemen cruising along the line,
had occasionally visited several small, low,
and desolate coral reefs and islands, on
some of which they had found valuable deposits
of phosphates, or so-called phosphatic guano;
and in August of that year Congress passed
an act authorizing American citizens, under
prescribed conditions, to claim, acquire,
and enter into possession of such islands,
in the name of the United States. Under the
operation of this act a number of islands
were so claimed and entered upon by Ameri-can
citizens, who there and then acquired lawful
possession, and for many years there-after
enjoyed exclusive rights of ownership and
exploitation under the authority and jurisdiction
of the United States government and the protection
of the American flag.
Two of these islands, Jarvis and Baker's
(New Nantucket), about that time became unquestionably
American possessions, not only under the
congressional act, but also by the official
act of the commander of the United States
ship St. Mary's, Captain Davis, U. S. N.,
who, under instructions from his government,
in 1858, visited both and "took formal
possession of the islands in the name of
the United States, and deposited in the earth
a declaration to that effect, executed on
parchment and well protected," all of
which he duly reported to the Secretary of
the Navy (Executive Document No. 11, Senate,
Thirty-fifth Congress, First Session, 1858).
The flag of the United States was there-fore
floating over American insular posses-sions
in the Pacific as long ago as 1858 and as
far west as 176º 32' from Greenwich, at Baker's
Island, thirteen miles north of the equator,
and only about three hundred miles from the
anti-prime meridian dividing the two hemispheres.
If these facts are new or in any way sur-prising
to some good American citizens who, in these
latter days, have become urgent advocates
of the policy of territorial extension in
the Pacific, and who, perhaps, especially
maintain that the flag, once raised, must
never be hauled down, it may be still more
surprising to such readers to learn that,
somehow, in the course of human events, after
many years of possession and active operation
by American citizens, and notwith-standing
the provision of the original con-gressional
act that no guano should be taken from such
islands except for the benefit of American
citizens and for the purpose of being used
within the United States, all these islands
have been delivered or aban-doned to other
claimants and, by hook or crook, have passed
into British possession, under the British
flag.
This is true not only of islands that were
once acquired and held under the act of 1856
alone, but also of Jarvis and Baker's, for
which special claims were made in 1858 by
the United States government through its
agent Captain Davis, in the St. Mary's: both
of these islands have since passed, either
by sale or license or abandonment of the
Ameri-can claimants and occupants, into the
pos-session of an English trading firm, and
thus to an English corporation formed for
the purpose of taking over the business of
said firm about January 1, 1897. That the
de-posits were not then entirely exhausted
is at least indicated by the prospectus of
the English company, which states that the
islands referred to then contained about
one hundred and twenty thousand tons of guano.
It was some years before the date just named
that one or more of her British Majesty's
ships appeared in the mid-Pacific, cruising
with a sharp lookout for any unoccupied islands
that could be had for the picking up; and
in 1889, more than thirty years after the
visit of the St. Mary's, when Captain Davis
took possession of Jarvis Island in the name
of the United States, H. M. S. Cormorant
(funny name!) came sailing over the equatorial
ocean, seeking what she might devour in that
line, and finding Jarvis presumably with
nobody at home to set the Stars and Stripes,
naturally gobbled up the little island and
sailed away, not only with-out provoking
any protests, but, apparently, with such
acquiescent assent on the part of the United
States that a naval chart of the Pacific,
published in 1896 by the Hydro-graphic Office
of the United States Navy Department for
the purpose of showing the insular possessions
of various nations, ex-pressly indicates
Jarvis as a British island. Christmas, Fanning,
and Palmyra islands, lying several degrees
farther north and, generally, between Jarvis
and Hawaii, were taken up by the Cormorant
about the same time. Since then almost every
island in that part of the Pacific has been
claimed as a British possession; and on the
naval chart just referred to the only islands
in that re-gion which are not distinctly
indicated as British are Baker's and its
single near neigh-bor, Howland's, and both
of these are now actually occupied by the
above-mentioned English company, which is,
or recently was, actively engaged in the
shipment of guano therefrom, under lease
or license of the Co-lonial Office of the
British government and under the protection
of the British flag.
These scattered islands, unrelated to other
groups, are generally known as the "Line
Islands." What importance they may still
have for their guano deposits is perhaps
questionable; but their possible value as
cable stations has recently come into view
and may some day demand serious consid-eration.
This possibility seems now all the more important
since the United States government, in 1899,
seeking to acquire an eligible cable station,
made an offer of one million dollars, which
the German govern-ment declined, for Ualan,
or Kusaie, some-times known as Strong's Island,
situated fifteen hundred miles or more west
and northerly from Baker's. Fanning's Island,
an inhabited coral lagoon, a few degrees
north of Jarvis, was some time since made
a per-manent cable station for a British
five-thou-sand-mile cable now in process
of construc-tion between Vancouver and Australia.
As will be seen by the accompanying chart,
Jarvis and Baker's are both conveniently
situated on lines connecting the Pacific
coast of the United States with Australia
or New Zealand, touching Hawaii and Samoa;
and the claim of ownership by the United
States, based on the act of possession taken
by Captain Davis, may sooner or later give
rise to an international question.
Jarvis Island, nearly due south from Hawaii,
lies hundreds of miles from any high land
and many miles from any land whatever. In
latitude it is twenty-two miles south of
the equator and in longitude 1590 58' west
from Greenwich. It is a small speck of coral
reef in mid-ocean, between one and two miles
long from east to west, and less than a mile
wide from north to south, with an area of
perhaps a thousand acres. On the flat surface
of the coral-built platform-reef, just level
with the sea at low tide, the waves, breaking
on its outer edge, have swept to-gether a
mass of coral debris and sand, piling up
a snow-white beach between twenty and thirty
feet high, which is an encircling rim of
a saucer-shaped surface, the central part
of which is eight or ten feet lower than
the crest. The island, once a lagoon, is
now filled with coral debris. The evaporation
of sea-water in the centralbasin left there,
long ago, a bed of gypsum (sulphate of lime),
on which the guano was subsequently deposited,
with resulting phos-phates.
The interior surface of Jarvis is almost
as completely white as the beach and the
sur-rounding ring of surf, shaded only slightly
here and there by a thin and scanty growth
of dark-green vegetation, a sort of creeping
purslane and a little, long, coarse brownish
grass. Seen from a ship several miles away,
in a dazzling sunlight, the white island
can hardly be distinguished from the sea
break-ing in shining surf upon the encircling
reef or rippling with whitecaps in the distant
view. It was a tradition of early days that
a vessel once approached the island, known
to be very near, hut not yet made out by
any of the lookouts aloft, when one of these
suddenly sang out, not "Land ho!"
but that he could see a flag on the water,
then a house, then a man riding on a mule,
and, finally, the island under the mule!
The rider thus distinguished was the late
Dr. Judd of Hono-lulu, celebrated in the
history of Hawaiian affairs, who was just
then visiting the island as agent for the
American Guano Company of New York, the newly
established occu-pant in actual possession.
Baker's Island is about one thousand miles
west of Jarvis, resembling it in general
character, but smaller, containing only about
four hundred acres, and being darker in color
and somewhat more thickly covered with purslane
and grass. It also is very remote from any
high land, and has only one near neighbor,
Howland's Island, about fifty miles away
to the northwest.
As sources of phosphatic guano Jarvis and
Baker's were unquestionably the most important
of all the Pacific equatorial islands which
were acquired by American citizens under
the congressional act of 1856. The above-named
company of New York capitalists engaged actively
in the enterprise of equipping these two
islands with all required facilities for
the exploitation of the deposits and the
loading of vessels. Supplies, materials,
and laborers were sent there from Honohulu.
Vessels were chartered at San Francisco to
load at the islands and to sail for Hampton
Roads. A ship was dispatched from New York
to Jarvis and Baker's, loaded with materials
for the construction of houses and working
plant on the islands, and with cables, chains,
anchors, buoys, and other needed outfit for
deep-water moorings.
It was to examine these phoaphatic deposits
and to search for others like them that the
writer visited and explored a large number
of coral islands lying along the Pacific
equatorial belt in 1859-61.
The most serious difficulties of the new
enterprise were met in the mooring of vessels
and the transport of guano from shore to
ship. There was no safe anchorage. The shores
of coral reefs and islands in the Pacific
are generally very bold, descending at a
precipitous angle from the surface to submarine
depths, which, in this part of the ocean,
average probably more than fifteen thousand
feet. At Jarvis and Baker's and similarly
situated islands the water deepens boldly
from the outer edge of the reef, and at hardly
a ship's length from the shore a hundred-fathom
line could not reach bottom. Ships were usually
moored off the western shore of the island,
where they were made fast to mooring-buoys,
which were held in place by heavy anchors
and connected chain cables, two anchors for
each mooring, one on the outer edge of the
reef and one off-shore in deep water. Thus
moored, there was hardly room for a ship
to swing between the buoy and the reef, a
safe enough posi-tion with wind and current
both steadily offshore, but very dangerous
under other conditions. The prevailing winds
were east-erly trades, which, with the equatorial
current running almost always strongly to
the westward, usually kept the ships tailing
off-shore.
This strong westerly current was thus an
important factor in the safety of vessels
lying at the islands; but it sometimes slacked,
and sometimes turned eastward, probably because
the belt of current and counter-current,
somewhat like a double-track road-way, shifted
now and then north or south. The westerly
current also greatly increased the difficulty
of bringing ships safely to the moorings.
The experiences of shipmasters engaged in
that service in those days were often trying
and occasionally disastrous. The captain
of a ship found himself confronted with the
difficult task of bringing his vessel to
the mooring under sail, and virtually in
the open sea, with just way enough to reach
and get hold of the cable, already made fast
by one end to the mooring-buoy and coiled
in a boat, ready to be put aboard ship at
the moment of her coming within reaching
distance. Too much way meant forging ahead
to fatal disaster on the reef, a ship's length
beyond the buoy. Too little way meant failure
to make fast, with all the unhappy consequences
of drifting swiftly to leeward in the strong
westerly current, and beating to windward,
sometimes many days, before returning for
another attempt. In some instances this was
many times repeated, and one ship was unlucky
enough to lose more than a month's time in
trying to get fast to the island. Sometimes
it came to pass that a ship-cap-tain, having
in mind an overmastering fear of missing
his mooring and thus falling helplessly to
leeward, gave his vessel too much way, and
went straight to wreck and ruin on the reef
before him. Such was the fate that the good
ship Silver Star met at Jarvis Island, November
10, 1860, in which unhappy event the writer
participated as passenger.
Once securely moored under the lee of the
western shore, a ship might lie for days
and weeks as quietly as in a well-protected
harbor and almost as free from any considerable
danger. The vessels usually lay within a
cable's length of the platform-reef, on the
outer edge of which the sea broke in a gentle
surf, which offered no hindrance to the passage
to and fro of the whaleboats carrying the
guano in canvas bags from shore to ship.
These conditions prevailed generally during
summer months. At other seasons, especially
between October and March, there would come
occasional periods of very high surf, several
days in duration, when all traffic between
the shore and the ships became impossible.
Then the sea, rolling in from the vast expanse
of ocean, moving in long, swelling billows
with smooth, near neighbor, Howland's Island,
about fifty miles away to the northwest.
As sources of phosphatic guano Jarvis and
Baker's were unquestionably the most important
of all the Pacific equatorial islands which
were acquired by American citizens under
the congressional act of 1856. The above-named
company of New York capitalists engaged actively
in the enterprise of equipping these two
islands with all required facilities for
the exploitation of the deposits and the
loading of vessels. Supplies, materials,
and laborers were sent there from Honohulu.
Vessels were chartered at San Francisco to
load at the islands and to sail for Hampton
Roads. A ship was dispatched from New York
to Jarvis and Baker's, loaded with materials
for the con-struction of houses and working
plant on the islands, and with cables, chains,
an-chors, buoys, and other needed outfit
for deep-water moorings.
The business of loading ships was, of course,
much interrupted by these periods of surf.
No wharf or pier built on the plat-form-reef
could be made to withstand such destructive
force. All the traffic of the islands between
ship and shore was carried on in whale-boats
manned by Hawaiian Kanakas, amphibious fellows,
very skillful in their work, apt in choosing
the favorable moment for passing the breakers,
and, in an unlucky capsize, as much at home
in the water as fishes. Sometimes, when high
surf made the reef quite impassable for boats,
it was an easy task and good sport for one
of these Kanakas to swim from the shore to
a ship at the mooring and return, carrying
messages in a bottle tied about him.
It was during one of these high surf periods,
when the sea was breaking on the reef with
such extreme violence that neither boat nor
swimmer could live in it, that the writer
devised and successfully employed a method
of communication between shore and ship by
means of a large kite, which was made of
a light wooden frame covered with thin cotton
sheeting, and provided with a strong kite
line. When the kite was well up in the air,
trailing out seaward across the reef, and
had mounted high enough to sustain a little
extra weight, a small ring was securely fastened
to the kite line. Through this ring a lighter
cord was passed, and a bottle, containing
a letter for the ship, was tied to the outer
end. The kite was then allowed to rise, taking
out both lines and carrying aloft the bottle,
swinging high in air. When the bottle was
evidently out beyond the surf, the kite line
was made fast on shore, and the lighter line,
passing through the ring, was paid out, allowing
the bottle to descend to the water. The ship-captain,
seeing what was intended, sent a boat to
fetch the letter; a reply was presently placed
within the bottle, which was then pulled
up to the ring on the kite line, and soon
brought ashore by hauling in the kite.
Jarvis and Baker's were known and located
on the charts long before they were supposed
to contain anything valuable. They were rarely
visited or seen except by whale-men, who,
cruising along the equator, might find occasion
to land in search of eggs or to call at the
solitary post-office, which, at Baker's,
during many years prior to perma-nent occupation,
consisted of a covered box fastened to a
post set upright in the sand, where passing
whalemen might both find letters for themselves
and leave letters for others, it being a
custom for all whale-ships bound homeward
or to the Arctic to take along all letters
going their way. Occa-sionally such an island
has become the burial-place of some poor
mariner whom death has overtaken in its neighborhood,
and whose body, instead of being committed
to the deep, has been left to repose in a
sandy grave upon this remote speck of ter-restrial
isolation, high up on the far crest of the
beach, beyond the sweep, but always within
the sound, of the breakers on the reef.
Such were two unfortunate whalemen, my contemporary
voyagers, whose bodies lie buried on one
of the Caroline Islands, and whose epitaph,
printed some time since in the New York "Tribune,"
reads as follows:
Sacred to Wilm. Collis
Boat Steerer of the SHIP
SaiNT george of New BED
ford who By the Will of Almitey god
was siviriliery injured by a
BULL WHALE
off this Iland on
18 March 1860
also to
Pedro Sabbanas of Guam
4th MaTE drouwned on
the SAME Date his
Back broken by WhALE
above
MeNTioned
It was doubtless due to observations made
by visitors on such errands that the guano
deposits on these islands first attracted
the attention that led to the discovery of
their value. The material of the deposits,
both in appearance and composition, was generally
quite unlike guano of the Peruvian islands,
much of it, especially of Jarvis, being as
white as snow, as hard as rock, and almost
wholy without ammonia. It was, in fact, bird-guano
from which almost everything soluble had
been leached by water, leaving a highly concentrated
calcareous phosphate, then worth, in the
United States, about thirty dollars a ton.
These deposits varied in thickness from a
few inches to a few feet. The islands had
been for ages the breeding-places of millions
of birds of many kinds, large and small,
subsisting mainly on the fish of the sea
and partly on the products of the reef. The
birds rest mostly on the bare surface of
the island, flocking together in solid masses
of thousands, each different kind grouping
al)art and not mingling with other sorts.
Where vegetation affords the material, some
kinds build roosts of twigs and stems two
or three feet high. Many burrow, and nest
in holes beneath the sandy surface.
In the course of ages these countless mil-lions
of birds produced a vast deposit of material
containing the concentrated phos-phates most
desirable as food for plants and for the
enrichment of the earth's soil; and it is
interesting to note how, by processes partly
natural and partly artificial, these mineral
phosphates of the Pacific Ocean in their
various states of being, illustrate what
may be called the transmigration of atoms.
From a state of solution in sea-water these
atoms of calcareous phosphate, de-rived originally
from primitive rocks, were converted into
various forms of fish food, both animal and
plant, and, thus assimilated, were subsequently
transformed into the bones and bodies of
the fish, which, in turn, as food for birds,
came, by and by, to form part of the phosphatic
deposits on these islands, whence they have
been conveyed in ships to the opposite side
of the planet for the fertilization of the
fields of America and Europe, there to be
again transformed into food, both plant and
animal, for millions of people in both hemispheres,
to become bone of our bone and, through human
embodiment, to be made partakers in all that
mortal man is heir to. Some such atoms may
rest in Westminster Abbey or in the tomb
of roy-alty; and countless thousands may
thus await the final mystery, at the last
trump, when this mortal must put on immortality.
Among the birds of these islands an orni-thologist
might perhaps find many varieties, all of
which are known to ordinary observers by
a few common names. The most numerous kinds
found there by the early occupants were the
gannets or boobies, the frigate-birds or
man-o'-war hawks, the tropic-birds or "bo's'ns,"
the gulls, tern, mutton-birds, noddies, petrels
or Mother Carey's chickens, and, during their
breeding-seasons, some game-birds, notably
curlew, snipe, and plover.
The gannets are comparatively large birds
and great diving fishers, pouncing from high
in the air upon fish deep in the water. They
go out from the island for a day's fishing
early in the morning, and return at evening,
heavily laden with fish, many of them large,
which they disgorge for home consumption,
usually after first satisfying the demands
of the tax-gatherers to whom they are com-pelled
to pay tribute. These are the man-o'-war
hawks, the tyrants and pirates of the feathered
community, depending largely on the toiling
fishers for their food. They pa-trol the
coast, a little way offshore, usually about
sunset, like a line of guards or revenue
officers, and waylay the returning fishing-birds,
preventing their landing until they have
surrendered a portion of their day's catch.
The man-o'-war hawk is also a some-what large
bird and an expert fisher, but he does most
of his fishing in the air. When the booby-bird
comes home from abroad he finds the man-o'-war
hawk "layin' for him "; and however
persistently he may seek to escape by dashing
flight, with much screech-ing and screaming,
he finds that before he can safely set foot
on the land he must dis-gorge a fish or two,
which the swift pursuer adroitly catches
in the air. It seemed, how-ever, to be generally
understood, as a modus vivendi, between the
fisher and the pirate-birds that their contentions
were only on the wing and that, once on land,
they should dwell peacefully in their separate
camping grounds.
The boobies are awkward and unwieldy on land,
and may be easily captured. They rarely seek
to escape when a man approaches, but, accustomed
to meet the demands of their familiar enemy,
the man-o'-war hawk, by disgorging a fish
in the air, they fre-quently resort to the
same process and lay at the feet of the intruding
stranger what stock of fish they have available.
The man-o'-war hawks turned this practice
to their own advantage by following after
any man who might appear among the nesting
birds, circling in the air just overhead,
ready to pick up the fish which the frightened
boobies might give up as a peace-offering.
The man-o'-war hawks were generally eager
for anything, and would hover closely, ready
to take from the hand of a man whatever he
might toss in the air. On one occasion one
of these birds swiftly snatched a notebook,
which lay for a moment on the ground, and
sailed away; dropping it, however, on finding
it to be neither fish nor rat. All the game-birds,
the curlew, snipe, and plover, were as shy
and hard to get at as they are in populated
countries. The gulls and the smaller tern,
when disturbed by man, would rise from the
ground in innumerable hocks, fly-ing, curving,
and circling in the sunlight an(d casting
a perceptible shadow, like a cloud, on the
land beneath.
There was one beautiful little white bird,
rarely to be seen except on the weather shore
of the island, hovering there over the reef
and the foaming breakers, flying slowly with
a gently wafting movement, circling overhead
almost within reach, and peering inquisitively
into one's eyes, as if seeking some spiritual
intercourse. Almost every visitor who saw
these birds was impressed by their remarkable
beauty and curious behavior.
Even sailors who came ashore for a Sunday's
liberty, sometimes rough fellows whose path
across the island could too often be traced
by the dead bodies of the booby-birds wantonly
slain, were strangely affected.
"What kind of a bird is that little
white one over there to windward?" one
of these men asked, returning from his tramp.
"Don't know any special name for it.
Why?"
"Danged if I don't believe it 's a spirit
of some kind," he replied.
It was interesting to read, some time after,
in Darwin's "Journal of Researches"
during the voyage of the Beagle, the following
note, referring to the birds on Keeling Island:
The gannets, sitting on their rude nests,
gaze at one with a stupid yet angry air.
The noddies, as their name expresses, are
silly little creatures. But there is one
charming birth; it is a small snow-white
tern, which smoothly hovers at the dis-tance
of a few feet above one's head, its large
black eye scanning, with quiet curiosity,
your expression. Little imagination is required
to fancy that so light and delicate a body
must be tenanted by some wandering fairy
spirit.
The tropic-bird, or "bo's'n," is
about as large as a gannet and, although
generally white, has two very long, delicate,
and usu-ally bright red tail-feathers, which
sailors call the "marlinespike,"
whence comes the name after the boatswain.
It is a pluckier bird than the gannet, more
self-respecting and self-contained. When
ap-proached by man, it neither waddles away
in a flurry nor disgorges a peace-offering
of fish, hut defends its eggs or young against
intruders.
Some interesting experiments were made with
these birds as messengers, especially between
Baker's and Howland's islands, about fifty
miles apart. On several occasions a bird
was taken from her eggs at Howland's Island
and placed on board a vessel going to sea
or to Baker's, whence she returned to her
nest directly after being liberated, bearing
a message, written on a bit of canvas, tied
to her foot. Thus the schooner Ortolan sailed
from Howland's one morning at eight o'clock,
carrying a bos'n which Was set free the following
day and was found on her nest next morning
at daylight with message reporting the latitude
and longitude of the vessel, sixty-eight
miles away, at the time of the bird's de-parture.
This may recall to readers of "Foul
Play" an interesting incident of that
well-known story by Charles Readé and Dion
Boucicault, in which the hero and heroine,
being castaways together on an otherwise
uninhabited island in the Pacific, are led
to study the problem "how to diffuse
intelligence from a fixed island over a hundred
leagues of ocean."
The idea of tying messages to the feet of
birds and so communicating with ships sail-ing
in that part of the world was derived by
the authors of the story from the actual
experiences of an Australian ship-captain
on whose vessel a bird once alighted, bearing
a message from stranded castaways seeking
rescue; but the plan of weighting the bird's
foot, not heavily enough to prevent flight,
but sufficiently to induce the bird to alight
on a vessel if occasion should offer, was
an invention which the author puts into his
hero's mind by causing him to observe a duck
seeking rest on a boat after flying with
obvious difficulty, due to an unnatural impediment
attached to one foot, which proved to be
a crab that had fastened itself there some
time before.
By a curious coincidence, this ideal con-ception
of the self-attachment of the over-weighting
crab was actually realized at Jar-vis Island
in the case of a gannet which was seen by
the writer to move with difficulty, by reason
of a heavy lump attached to one foot, which,
on examination, plainly told its own story.
The bird, at some time long before, had evidently
been on the reef at low tide, where a bivalve
as large as a fullsized clam had closed upon
its foot, never to open again. The bird had
flown away, and in time the mollusk inside
the shell had died without relaxing the grip.
Gradually the interior had been compactly
filled with fine sand, which, with alternate
wetting and dry-ing, had become a solid petrifaction.
The under side of the shell was worn away
by long contact with other surfaces; but
the upper side still showed the scallops
and flutings of the original form. It evidently
caused the bird much distress, which was
mercifully ended there and then, and the
foot, with its extraordinary attachment,
found a place, long ago, in the museum of
the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale.
There are but few, if any, islands in the
Pacific where rats may not be found, and
they are sometimes present in large num-bers.
In many cases they are the survivors of shipwreck.
On Howland's Island especially they had increased
and multiplied almost beyond belief. They
must have been on the island for years, as
there seemed to be no remaining sign of any
shipwreck that might have brought them. They
were very small, and had probably degenerated
under changed conditions of food. They lived
on eggs and the bodies of birds too small
to defend themselves. A struggle for existence
seemed to be in progress between the rats
and the smaller kinds of birds, on the eggs
of which the little rats depended chiefly
for their support, and these birds appeared
to be at the verge of extermination. The
larger birds were in no danger of this sort,
as they could not only easily defend their
eggs, but some were eager hunters for the
rats, which they greedily sought as food.
The man-o'-war hawks especially were as ravenous
for rats as for fish, and it seemed marvelous
that the rats could ever come to be so numerous
in the presence of such an enemy. The rats
probably managed to survive and increase
by keeping out of sight during the day, hid-ing
themselves away in holes or beneath the stones
or slabs of beach-rock, beyond the reach
of watchful hawks. Under cover of night they
emerged from their hiding-places and swarmed
over the surface of the island, seeking their
food among the smaller birds. They had no
fear of man, entering and overrunning his
premises with great freedom, seeking food
and fresh water. A little bait, attracting
the rats together, made it easy to kill a
score or more at a single fire of a shot-gun.
One day a gang of less than thirty Kanaka
laborers went out in the morning to hunt
rats, and returned before noon with a catch
of more than thirty-three hundred.
It became an amusing diversion to over-turn
the large flat stones beneath which the rats
were hiding in solid masses, and watch them
as they scampered in all directions, pursued
and quickly snatched up by the man-o'-war
hawks. These crafty birds were apt to learn
that the appearance of a man walking on the
island, especially with a dog, meant rats
for them, and any one thus going forth was
usually followed by a hovering flock, ready
and impatient for the sport they had learned
to expect. A rat brought to hand by the dog
was quickly tossed in air, where the birds
were ready to snatch it, sometimes with a
contest on the wing for disputed possession.
One form of this sport, a sort of aerial
polo, which seemed to be as good fun for
the birds as for the observers, consisted
in tossing two rats into the air at the same
moment, not singly and apart, but tied together
with about six feet of strong twine.
Instantly the birds made a dash for the rats,
and the successful winner of the first prize
went sailing off with one rat in his bill
and the other swinging in the air be-neath
until snatched by the second winner, when,
after a quick, sharp struggle and a taut
strain on the cord, the bird with the weaker
hold was compelled to let go, which again
opened the game to all pursuers. This then
went on as a continuous performance, with
somewhat Jonah-like but rapidly re-peated
disappearances and reappearances of the little
rats, swallowed and reluctantly disgorged
by the birds in quick succession, until the
flock, thoroughly exhausted by their impetuous
flight and extraordinary exercise, alighted
on the ground for a short truce, when the
two temporary stake-holders would be found
sitting face to face, keenly eyeing each
other from opposite ends of the string still
connecting them, each anxiously on the sharp
lookout for sudden jerks and unpleas-ant
surprises, while all the other pursuers gathered
around in a ring, waiting for the two prize-birds
to fly. The general aspect of all participants
seemed to verify the familiar adage that
the pleasure is not in the game, but in the
chase.
Sports and amusing or interesting diversions,
although somewhat rare. at these islands,
were not wholly lacking. The game-birds afforded
some shooting, while the reef and the sea
were more or less attractive for a fisherman.
Students of natural history found many engaging
pursuits. At low tide the reef is almost
bare. Along the outer edge it is frequently
gullied with short and narrow inlets from
the sea, forming pools with white sandy bottoms,
into the depths of which one may look down,
through quiet and beautiful green sunlit
water, and see, as in a great natural aquarium,
innumerable kinds of marine life-growing
corals, fishes of vivid colors flashing in
the sunlight, mol-lusks, sea-urchins, and
sea-shells in countless varieties of form,
size, and color. In such a pool a lady, wife
of the resident manager, nearly lost her
life while seeking shells on the reef at
low tide, when, having stepped into the water
and stooped deep down to reach a shell, her
arm was suddenly seized by a monstrous squid
or cuttlefish, which held her there with
such irresistible force that she would have
been quickly overcome and drowned if help
had not been close at hand.
Sharks, large and small, abound in the neighboring
waters, and sometimes, when the sea is smooth,
come within the outer edge of the reef. Flying-fish
are always in sight. Pursued by their enemies
in the water, they take to air, where the
fishing-birds await them. The flying-fish
are ex-cellent food. It was easy to catch
them, during the night, by hanging a lantern
in a boat moored offshore. The fish, attracted
by the light, fell into the boat, from which
they could not escape.
At high tide the reef was often beautiful,
covered then by about five or six feet of
water.. The Kanakas are fond of frolicking
in the water, and find as much fun playing
with their surf-boards on the reef as New
England boys do in coasting. It was very
amusing to watch a company of natives in
the surf, perhaps fifty or a hundred of them,
strung out in a line along the outer edge
of the reef, just where the water begins
to break, each with a light board six or
eight feet long, all ready and waiting for
the breaker as it gathered and rose to a
combing crest, each launching his board just
in front of the advancing wave, climbing
on to it, standing up, balancing himself
adroitly, keeping the board "end on"
as it shot in with the foaming breaker, all
shouting and singing as they came darting
toward the shore, or making fun of companions
who lost their balance and tumbled into the
sea again, and then up quickly and out, ready
for another shoot.
Sometimes the surf offered other diverting
scenes, more amusing to the observers on
the beach than to the active participants
on the reef. Occasionally a boat-load of
sailors, coming ashore for half a day's liberty,
might he seen risking the passage of high
surf on the reef in an ordinary boat, steered
with rudder and tiller-ropes, capsized by
the first breaker, tossed about in the water,
the sport of the waves and the amusement
of the Kanakas, and lucky to reach the beach
alive, and, if remaining in their boat at
all, crawling out of it at last through a
hole in its bottom.
Nor were unpleasant experiences of this sort
strictly limited to strangers and greenhorns,
as the resident nautical expert or pilot-captain
at Baker's Island had good reason to know.
The captain was going off one day to board
a ship, the Flying Dragon, then lying at
the mooring, intending to take with him as
a present to the ship's captain and com-pany
a very large basket of fresh eggs which he
had caused to be gathered that morning among
the nesting-places of the tern. These eggs,
though small, were very good to eat, and
the captain in his generous way provided
enough to fill a laundry hamper of the largest
size, one in which Falstaff might easily
have been concealed. It must have contained
thousands of eggs. As the captain of the
ship was accompanied by his wife, an accomplished
and agreeable young lady from Boston, the
shore-captain had ar-rayed himself in his
best linen and spotless white duck suit,
with the purpose of paying a visit of ceremony
in the cabin. The hamper filled with eggs,
uncovered at the top, was placed in the bow
of the whale-boat, while the portly captain
stood proudly in front of it, like a commanding
figurehead. Thinking the moment favorable,
lie gave the order to shove off, but, unhappily,
before the boat could reach smooth water,
a heavy sea fell upon the reef in an unusually
vicious breaker, lifting the bow of the boat
suddenly upward, taking the captain off his
feet, and tumbling him backward into the
hamper, where, in the confusion which followed
while the boat was tossing in the breakers,
he was left to struggle helplessly in a mass
of crushed eggs, from which he was quite
un-able to extricate himself. When, after
some assistance, he finally scrambled out
of the hamper, there was not an egg in it
left un-broken. The ludicrous effect of this
albu-minous spectacle in white and yellow,
varied in tone by adhering masses of brown-speckled
eggshell, may be left to the imagination
of the reader.
When these equatorial islands first became
American possessions, the birds were their
chief occupants. Other inhabitants were few,
both in kind and number, although' ants and
flies appeared in swarms when peo-ple came
to dwell there. Sheep and rabbits were introduced
about that time, as a con-tingent food resource,
and they thrived fairly well on the scanty
vegetation without fresh water.
These islands are in an almost rainless region,
and, having no source of fresh water in the
ground, are, for that reason, naturally uninhabitable
for mankind. Living there required hardly
less provision of water and food-supplies
than is needed for shipboard. The native
food resources of the islands were amply
abundant in fish, birds, and eggs; hut the
rainfall was found to be too uncer-tain and
unreliable for the needed water-supply.
Distilling apparatus was sometimes provided,
so that potable water could be produced from
the sea in the event of short supply from
ships; but, lacking this in one or more instances,
a precautionary measure consisted in laying
out on the ground in long rows and wide areas,
like strawberry patches, a great number of
shells, halves of large bivalves, each of
which, during a shower, caught a little water,
which was then gathered in buckets and poured
into a cask. Heavy showers fell occasionally,
usu-ally in the night; but in the daytime
it often happened that a rain-squall, approach-ing
the island from the windward, would part
in two, apparently divided by the up-ward
column of heated air rising from the land,
and so pass by, partly to the north and partly
to the south, leaving the central por-tion
of the island dry.
The climate was very equable and the weather
almost always perfect. The tem-perature varied
slightly between extremes ranging from 75º
to 85º Fahrenheit. The prevailing winds were
easterly trades, vary-ing in their direction
with the changing sea-sons, coming from the
northeast during the northern winter, when
the sun's declination is south, and from
the southeast during the northern summer,
when the sun's declination is north.
The apparent flow and set of the sea showed
similar variations, running from northeast
to southwest during the months of northern
winter, bringing more frequent periods of
rough water and higher surf; and from southeast
to northwest during the months of northern
summer, with smoother seas and fewer surf-days.
These variable conditions of sea and wind
produced a notable effect on the leeward
beaches of the islands, especially remarkable
at Baker's, where a large area of beach,
covering perhaps ten or fifteen acres, about
ten feet deep, and containing hundreds of
thousands of tons of sand, was shifted twice
every year, by the changing trend of these
sweeping seas, from the west t6 the south
shore of the island and back again, to and
fro, between the summer and winter seasons.
Strangely enough, whatever floating material
was washed by these very high seas from the
western or lee beach, instead of being carried
off to sea as might have been ex-pected,
was almost always kept within the outer line
of breakers, swept partly around the island
and washed up on the weather side. A large
lot of valuable spars which were lying on
the crest of the beach on the lee side of
Jarvis Island, and which, during one night
of high surf, were washed away and supposed,
at first, to have been carried off to sea,
were all found, a day or two later, stranded
high and dry on the weather beach at the
opposite or eastern end of the island. During
my stay among these islands I saw two shipwrecks,
the Silver Star on Jarvis, and the British
ship Virginia on Baker's, both on the western
shore, and in both in-stances the stranded
hulks were lifted, some time after, by the
winter surf and car-ried around to the south
side of the island.
Another noteworthy effect of changing seasons
at the equator is in the perceptible movement
of the sun from north to south and back again
between winters and sum-mers of the temperate
zones. At about the time of the equinoxes
in March and Sep-tember the sun is in the
zenith, exactly overhead, at noon, over the
equatorial islands, and his rays would then
fall down the chim-neys if there were any,
while the midday shadow of the house, the
only thing there to give any shade, fell
to the south during the northern summer and
to the north during the southern summer.
The days and nights are practically of equal
length all the year round. The sun rises
and sets at six o'clock, its greatest variation
being about two minutes. After the sunset
there comes no twilight. The daylight quickly
fades away, and within a quarter of an hour
the brighter stars appear. Sometimes the
most exciting event of the day was the keen
search of competing observers to see who
might first discern the evening star or locate
Sirius in the darkening sky. Under occasional
conditions the atmosphere was wonderfully
clear, with a per-fectly cloudless sky and
the horizon wholly free from mist or cloud-bank.
On several such occasions I have seen stars
of second magnitude, at the time of their
setting, plainly visible near and at the
horizon, hid-den for a moment by a rolling
billow and again visible at the instant preceding
final disappearance below the line where
sea and sky join. Such stars often seemed
like lights of ships, and I well remember
one evening at Jarvis, in December, 1860,
when we were anxiously looking for an expected
vessel, our island tender, the cry of "Sail
ho!" was raised, about nine o'clock,
upon the discovery on the eastern horizon
of a bright light which was supposed to be
that of the com-ing Josephine. A light was
set in the cupola on the house-top, and preparations
were in-stantly made to show signal-fires
on the weather beach, as a warning to the
ap-proaching vessel, possibly a little out
of her reckoning; hut the steady rising of
the light above the horizon soon made it
evident that we were looking at Jupiter.
It was under such circumstances that I had
the very unusual experience of seeing the
North Star from the southern hemisphere.
Looking to the north about seven o'clock
in the evening, January 6, 1861, I saw the
North Star about one degree high. It was
then about the tune of its upper meridian
transit, when it should have been a little
less than a degree and a half above the pole.
As my point of observation on Jarvis Island
was about twenty-two minutes of latitude
south of the equator, the star duly appeared
at the time of its upper meridian passage
about one degree above our horizon. It re-mained
clearly visible during the evening's observation,
which was again repeated in similar manner
four days later, January 10.
On these little equatorial islands, lonely
shocks of desolate coral reef and sand, sur-rounded
by sea and sky, life is reduced to its simplest
terms, and, unless excited by a casual shipwreck,
an unusually animating disaster, or by some
other diverting event, is as equable as the
climate and as monoto-nous as the ocean breaking
on the shore. Jarvis and Baker's, at the
beginning of operation, were both provided
with ample equipment for comfortable dwelling
and sub-sistence. The official residence
was a com-modious building, constructed in
New York and sent out around the Horn, ready
to be put together on arrival at the island.
It was a square, two-story house, with broad
verandas on each floor, many windows, a pyramidal
roof surmounted by a cupola serving as a
lighthouse and, above all, a flagstaff, from
which the star-spangled banner waved without
ceasing during the period of American occupation,
twenty-five or thirty years, and until the
Cormorant came along to raise the British
flag. It had the appearance of a sportsman's
seaside club-house, and was as completely
furnished as the celebrated mid-ocean cottage
which Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine discovered
in the course of their romantic voyage. Indeed,
for some time I thought that Mr. Stockton
must have somehow heard of the Jarvis Island
house and made it part of his story; but
he assured me, when I ques-tioned him, not
long before his lamented death, that although
several others had made similar inquiries,
the house he wrote of was one wholly of his
own invention; and he added the observation
that, as a matter of fact, he often found
it most difficult in writing fiction to steer
clear of the truth.
The working crews of the islands were quartered
in suitable camps near their field of labor.
They were native Hawaiians, good fellows,
willing workers, admirably adapted to the
duty required of them, which was largely
in boats and in the water. I well remember
one who excelled in diving. On a certain
occasion, when the placing of a deep-water
mooring had just been accomplished, it became
necessary to detach under water the end of
a hawser which had been made fast to the
submerged part of a spar-buoy, about forty
or fifty feet below the surface of the sea.
The man was told to take his sheath-knife
down with him and cut the hawser as near
its end as he could, so as to lose as little
as possible of the valuable cable. Taking
his knife in his teeth, he disappeared beneath
the water, and remained out of sight so long
that he was almost given up for lost, when
he suddenly reappeared, and, on being asked
if ho had cut the hawser as he had been told
to, reported that he had unbent it without
cutting off any part of it whatever.
If the rainfall had been sufficient, these
barren, desolate islands would long ago have
been covered with vegetation, including coconut-trees,
which would have given abundant support to
a population of native islanders such as
may be found now inhabiting small coral islands
of the Pacific, depending wholly on the coconut
for their food and drink, having but little
use and no need whatever for fresh water.
Nature's processes of distribution by the
great ocean currents bring to all these Paific
islands, sooner or later, not only the seed
of life-supporting vegetation, hut also the
drifting waifs of humanity, carried by the
winds and waves from the over-popu-lated
to the uninhabited islands. Many of these,
known fifty or more years ago to he without
population, have since been peopled in such
ways. Howland's Island, although naturally
uninhabitable, gave various indi-cations
of early visitors, probably natives drifting
from windward islands, whose traces were
still visible in the remains of a canoe,
a blue head, pieces of bamboo, and other
distinctly characteristic belongings. A modern
instance was also observed at Baker's Island
in 1863, when a Japanese junk was discovered
drifting by, which, on being overhauled,
was found to contain the dead bodies of four
Jap-anese men.
Had the equatorial islands been thus cov-ered
with trees and thick vegetation, with or
without population, the birds could not have
nested there in dense masses on the ground,
and the guano deposits which have resulted
under existing conditions would never have
been formed.