Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1885-06-05
Possessions of the United States.

England and Russia-nOw about to
close in desperate struggle for Cen
trail Asian supremacy-are credited
with being respectively the first and
second nations of the world in point
of area, and the second and third in
the matter of population. The tcem-
ing Chinese Empire is estimated to OK
coed either in the numbers OF its peo-
pie. Next come the Republic Of
France and its dependencies in point
of population, and the United States
in area. Much has been said of the
British Empire, on which the sun new
er sets, and the Russian Empire, which
spreads over an eighth portion of the
globe. Thousands upon thousands of
the square miles of territory dominated
by the Lion and Bear are entirely uu-
inhabitable, including as they do most
of the North Polar regions of both
hemispheres and arid deserts and STEP
pes in other climes. The United States
is nearly the equal of either empire in
the extent of habitable area over which
the spangled banner floats. And she,
too, has great, almost limitless, areas
of ice-covered continents and islands
which are never counted as part of her
landed possessions, and yet which she
may quite as justly be credited with
as Russia or England, with certain of
their uninhabitable possessions in
frozen zones. Few biographies show
on their maps these foreign posses
sions of the United States, and brief
reference to them is likely to surprise
the citizen who has been accustomed
to contemplate the possessions of the
American Union as hedged in by the
bounds of her States and Territories.
But she can really make quite an ar
ray of foreign possessions, which arc
hers by the divine right of discovery,
which has given to most of the powers
of the earth their foreign dependencies.
The voyages OF Kane and subsequent
American explorers thus gave the
United States the whole northwestern
portion of Greenland as far as discov-
cred, and Grinnell Land on the oppo-
site shore of Smith Sound. The ia.
nous statisticians, Benin and Wagner,
give the area of the Greenland stretch
OF ice and glacier, known as Lincoln
and Grant lands from seventy-eight
degrees to eighty-three degrees) as
1872, 700 kilometers, and Of Grim ell
Land at $3.50. Wrangel Land has
66, 100 kilometers. There are no
estimates even of the area of the 7ari-
Gus islands north Of Siberia discovered
by the Jeanette, and it is doubtful it
they do not belong to the New Siber~
ian group, classed for many years as
belonging to Russia.
The great American exploring ex-
petition of 1910 discovered most of tho
vast ice-hedged coast of the Antarctic
Continent, which has been roughly
estimated to extend over 100000
square miles. Some of the lands dis
covered by Commodore Wilkes have
thus been estimated. the ngures being
in kilometers: Graham's land, 100000;
Alexandra. 10000; Wilkes, $4,000;
Enderby, $4,000.
The following islands and groups in
Polynesia belong to the United States:
Barber, Palmyra, Prospect, Tanning,
Christmas, Starbuck. Penryhyn, Swan,
Pitt, Mexican, Hull and Enderby. The
United States also owns the Bay of
Pago Pago in the Samoan Island.
There are no obtaina BILE statistics of
any of these foreign possessions, ~
and the ordinary American citizen is
quite content to think of the Union as
embracing only the sweep of land
from ocean to ocean and lakes to gulf,
not even counting in frozen Alaska
and tine girdle of Aleutian Islands that
span the Pacific Ocean. II other coun-
tres were not granted by geographers
their equally important possessions,
popular knowledge of respective areas
would be greatly increased.-Detroit
Free press