Part 79 (2/2)
OUR NEW POSSESSIONS (CONTINUED).
THE LADRONE, OR MARIANA ISLANDS.
It was a welcome sight to Magellan and his crew when, one day in March, nearly 400 years ago, they beheld the verdant and beautifully sloping hills of the Ladrone Islands. Eighteen weary months before they had sailed from the coast of Spain, and all that time, first to the southwest and then to the northwest, they had followed the setting sun.
Theirs were the first vessels manned by white men that had ever plowed the trackless Pacific; and this was the first land ever seen by white men within that unknown ocean.
It was a pitiable crew on those three small, weather-beaten s.h.i.+ps, who drew, that March morning, toward the coast of the present island of Guam, which is now a possession of the United States. Hunger and thirst had driven them to the verge of madness. They had eaten even the leather thongs from their sail fastenings, and only a small mug of water per day was the portion of drink for a man. ”Land! Land!!” It was a glad cry from the watch aloft. There were palm trees, cocoanuts, green gra.s.s, tropical fruits, an abundance of fresh water, and--though naked--a curious and friendly people. No wonder Magellan paused to rest himself and his sailors.
Those little islands have never been of much value, and never can be.
Seventeen of them stretching in a row about six hundred miles from north to south, and their total area, including their islets and reefs, is variously estimated at from 400 to 560 square miles. Hence, there is but about one-fourth more territory on the whole seventeen islands combined than is included within the corporate limits of the city of Greater New York.
A broad channel divides the Ladrones into two groups. The northern group consists of ten islets, without inhabitants; the southern group has seven islands, four of which are inhabited. The largest island, _Guahan_, known to us as _Guam_, ceded to us by Spain, was taken by our wars.h.i.+p Charleston on July 4, 1898. This island contains the only town in the colony. Its full Spanish name is _San Ignacio de Agana_. It is the capital of the archipelago, and contains more than half of the whole population.
THE NATIVE INHABITANTS.
When first visited by Europeans, the archipelago contained from 40,000 to 60,000 souls, represented by two distinct cla.s.ses, the n.o.bles and the people, between whom marriage, and even contact, were forbidden. But the Spanish conquest soon ended this distinction by reducing all alike to servitude. For a long time after Spanish occupation, the natives complained and finally rebelled against the oppressive measures of their rulers; but by the end of the seventeenth century they ceased their resistance, and it was found by a census that fully half of them had perished or escaped in their canoes to the Caroline Islands, and that two-thirds of their one hundred and eighty villages had fallen to ruins.
Then came an epidemic which swept away nearly all the natives of Guam; and the island of Tinian (one of the group) was depopulated and its inhabitants brought to Guam.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NATIVE HOUSE AND PALMS, LADRONE ISLANDS.]
Nearly all the new arrivals soon died. In the year 1760, a census showed a total of only 1,654 inhabitants left in all the islands, and the Spaniards repopulated them by bringing Tagals from the Philippines.
These, mixed with the remaining natives and Spaniards, have steadily increased. The population of the islands in 1899 was estimated at about 9,000. The people are generally lacking in energy, loose in morals, and miserably poor. Their education has been seriously neglected. Their religion is Catholic, no Protestant missions having been encouraged--we might say, not allowed--there or in the Philippines or the Carolines.
TOPOGRAPHY, CLIMATE, ETC.
The islands of the northern group are mountainous, the alt.i.tudes reaching from 2,600 to 2,700 feet. There are evidences of volcanoes all over the archipelago, and some mountains contain small craters and cones not yet extinct. The climate of the Ladrones, though humid, is salubrious, and the heat, being tempered by the trade winds, is milder than in the Philippines. The yearly average temperature of Guam is 81.
Streams are everywhere copious--though the clearing of the land has diminished their size of late years. The original flora consists generally of Asiatic plants, but much has been introduced from the Philippines and other sources.
Cocoanuts, palms, the bread tree, and tropical trees and plants generally, thrive. The large fruit bat which abounds in the Philippines is indigenous to the Ladrones, and, despite its objectionable odor, is a princ.i.p.al article of food. Swine and oxen are allowed to run wild, and are hunted when needed. There are only a few species of birds; even insects are rare; and the reptiles are represented by several kinds of lizards and a single species of serpent. No domestic animals were known in the islands until introduced by the Spaniards.
When the United States steams.h.i.+p Charleston opened fire on the little city of Agana, July 4, 1898, the people had not heard of the war, and the governor said he thought ”the n.o.ble Americans were saluting” him, and was ”deeply humiliated because he had no powder to return their salute.” It was an easy, bloodless victory. The governor and his soldiers were carried to Manila as prisoners, and an American garrison of a few men left to take charge of this new American territory in the Pacific.
CONCLUSION.
Thus at the close of the nineteenth century, the Greater United States a.s.sumes its appointed place among the foremost nations of the world, and stands on the threshold of achievements whose grandeur no man dare attempt to prophesy. We pause, awed, grateful, and profoundly impressed, when we recall the mighty events, the amazing progress, and the wonderful advancements in discovery, science, art, literature, and all that tends to the good of mankind that are certain to give the twentieth century a pre-eminence above all the years that have gone before.
The new era of our country has opened. The United States enters on the first stage of the transformation from an isolated commonwealth into an outreaching power with dependencies in both hemispheres. We can no longer hold an att.i.tude of aloofness from the rest of the world. With vulnerable points in our outlying possessions, we must make ready to defend them not only by force of arms but by diplomatic skill.
Entangling alliances as heretofore will be avoided, and the conditions, complications, and policies of foreign powers must in the future possess a practical importance for us.
The original thirteen States have expanded into forty-five, embracing the vast area between the two oceans and extending from the British possessions to the Gulf of Mexico. To them has now been added our colonial territory, so vast in extent that, like the British Empire, the sun never sets on our dominions. Where a hundred years ago were only a few scattered villages and towns, imperial cities now raise their heads.
Thousands of square miles of forest and solitude have given place to cultivated farms, to factories, and workshops that hum with the wheels of industry. The Patent Office issues 40,000 patents each year. We have three cities with more than a million population apiece, and twenty-five with a population ranging from a hundred thousand to half a million.
Greater New York is the second city in the world, and, if its present rate of growth continues, it will surpa.s.s London before the middle of the coming century. Our population has grown from 3,000,000 at the close of the Revolution to 75,000,000. When Andrew Jackson became President there was not a mile of railroad in the United States. To-day our mileage exceeds that of all the countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, and the employes, connected directly or indirectly with railroads in the United States, number almost a million persons. The half-dozen crude newspapers of the Revolution have expanded into more than 20,000, whose daily news is gathered from every quarter of the globe. The total yearly issue is more than three billions.
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