San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1895-08-10


gyman OF the Norwegian Lutheran
church in the diocese of the city of
Bergen, and is also distinguished as
writer and speaker. Elected to the
storthing in 1878 he joined the political
party of which his distinguished uncle,
John Sverdrup, was the leader. In 1884
he was appointed member of the Nor
wegian council of state and served as
chief of the Norwegian ecclesiastical
department, 1SS6-'S7. Resigning from
the Norwegian cabinet in 1889 he was
reelected to the storthing, 1891, and
again at the election last spring.
LITTLE ISLAND COLONIES.
Handouts of People on Specks OF Land In
the Pacific.
Awhile ago sixty-three persons, the
entire population of little island in
the Pacific ocean, trooped down to the
landing place wild with joy and ex-
element. They saw small steamer
entering through a gap in the coral
reef that fringes their island and
moving slowly toward the wharf No
wonder the fifteen families on Lord
Howe island cheered and threw up
their hats. 1t was the first time in
half year that they had heard from
the outer world.
1t happened this way: Though Lord
Howe island is about four hundred
and fifty miles out in the ocean, 1t is
politically a part of New South Wales.
Norfolk island, several hundred miles
still further out at sea, is also,
nominally, part of this Aus
tralian province, though she let's
both islands shift for them
selves most of the time. Four times q
year the mail schooner Mary ogilvie
has been sent out from Sydney to visit
the oceanic outposts. On her last trip
the schooner was totally wrecked on
the precipitous coast of Norfolk island
1t took some months for the news to
reach Sydney and the dispatch of an
| other vessel, and so it happened that
| Lord Howe island was cut off from
the rest of the W orld for half year.
Lord Howe is one of the smallest in
habited islands of any ocean, and is
| typical of the few rock scattered here
and there which give sustenance to a
handful of people. 1t is shaped exact
| ly like boomerang. 1t is eight miles
| long and from one and half to two
miles wide. Its besalt sides
rise in places three Thousand
| feet above the surface of the
sea. 1t is nothing but a prodigious
rock thrust into the air by plutonic
| forces; and one would think that peo-
| pie would be willing to scratch very
hard for living before they would
isolate themselves in such home.
But this half tropical island has ex-
traordinary verdure and beauty. A
reporter of one of the Sydney papers,
| who was sent out on the Thetis, says
he never saw anything SO picturesque
as the towering mountains dotted here
and there with the little white cot
tages of the fifteen families who stood
| cheering at the water edge.
After few days the Thetis steamed
away, Ave hundred miles, to Norfolk
island, to put this other speck in the
| ocean again in touch with the world.
| Small as it is, Norfolk is five times as
large as Lord Howe island. Every body
has heard of the Pitcairn islanders,
but there may be many who do not
| know that three-fourths of the de-
scendants of the Bounty mutineers and
their Tahitian wives no longer live on
| Pitcairn, but for nearly forty years
have titled the soil of Norfolk or hunt
ed the whale around its coasts. 1t
was in 1856 that the Pitcairn colony,
grown too large for their two or three
| square miles of territory, were all trans
| ferred to Norfolk, where these simple,
God-fearing people were in striking
| contrast with the convict colony Great
| Britain had maintained there. The
| last of these poor wretches had been
taken away, and an era of perez sue
| ceeded the days of violence and blood
| shed when the convicts, treated with
incredible severity, were shot down
| even in the church where they some
times took refuge.
Two years after their removal to
Norfolk island twenty-eight of the Pit
| cairn natives, homesick for the be-
loved rock on which they were born,
were taken back to it, and their de-
scendants are the Pitcairn islanders of
to-day.-N. Y. Sun.