The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-08-21

| fly to them by the thousands and there rest
| There are often other islands near which
| to all appearance are quite as desirable. but
| which are untouched. Even the disturbance
| caused by the removing of the guano does
| not seem to prevent the birds returning to
| their roost. On the Chincha islands, which
We're supposed to be entirely exhausted,
fresh deposits of guano have recently been
made, and in 1894 thirty tons of new guano
was actually shipped.
WHERE THE GUANO COMES FROM
! Nearly every one knows that guano is the
excrement of birds. A sea gull which is
one of the smallest of the guano-producing
birds. will drop from four to six ounces of
excrement day. and in the breeding sea-
son of ten weeks about twenty-eight pounds.
Other birds produce more. and the many
little deposits throughout the ages have
made these vast quantities. Guano has.
however, other things mixed with it. The
material taken from the beds is made up
also of dead seals. who crawl upon the
guano rocks to die. There are thousands
of sealskins mixed with the bird manure,
and not long ago FIVE hundred tons of such
skins were excavated from one guano de-
post. The birds which make the guano
are OF many kinds. One of the chief species
is the pelican. have seen these ungainly,
big-billed birds in such fiocks that they
fairly darkened the face of the ocean as
they flew over it. They feed upon the
fishes, and whenever you see a flock of pei
leans you may be sure that there is a school
of fish near by. The bills of the pelicans
have great bags of yellow skin under them,
and they use these as nets to scoop up the
fish. They are the gluttons of the sea and
air, and often gorge themselves to such an
extent that they cannot rise from the
water, but remain there until sufficient of
their food has digested to tighten their
weight. About the Lobos islands there are
always millions of pelicans. The waters are
black with them, and as you near the ISL
ands you see them by the thousands seated
on the rocks. They seem to be sociable
creatures and they hunt in fiocks. They are
but little afraid of man, and as you near
the islands they seldom move without you
go right among them. The guano of the
Lobos islands is found in pockets covered
with layers of sand which often vary in
thickness from two to fifteen feet. The sand
is shoveled off and the guano is then taken
out. AS it is dug into a strong smell of
ammonia rises, and the men generally wear
iron masks over their faces to keep the
ammonia dust out of their mouths, noses
sand and it is very penetrating. The guano
is first loaded on trucks and carried on
tramway to the shore, where it is trans
ferred to the ships, to be taken to Europe
or America. 1 am told that shipload of
guano does not smell at all badly after a
few days. The ammonia of the upper crust
passes off and you cannot notice the filth
ness of the cargo without going down into
the hold
A BIG AMERICAN CLAIM.
When Humboldt visited South America, in
1904, he called attention to the value of the
guano beds on the Chincha islands They
were then sixty feet deep and he said there
was enough manure on them to enrich the
WORKOUT lands of the old world. The de-
posts, however, were not thought to be of
any value by the Peruvians until nearly
half a century later, when a Frenchman
ramed Cochet called attention to them and
claimed one-thrd of all the product by right
of discovery. He travelled from place to
place and picked out islands from which it
is said that more than s., 200 100000 worth of
guano was Sold He declared by the
Peruvian Congress as the true discoverer of
the beds and uses of guano, and in 1349
grant of 5000 tons of guano was voted him.
He never got it. however, and, although his
claim by right of discovery which, accord
ing to Peruvian law, gave the discoverer
one-third, aggregated over $40O, 900 600, he
died in poornouse in Paris. Another dis
coverer of some of the guano islands was
treated in the same way by the Peruvian
government. This was naturalized Amer
lean citizen named Landreau. He discov-
cred guano deposits which are worth about
$40OO00,000, and, according to the Peruvian
law, should have had 1888, 900 from them.
1t was. it is said, through his
discoveries that Peru was able to get
a loan of Europe of two hundred mil
lion dollars, but when it came to the
question Of paying Landreau he was cut
off without a cent. Just before the war
between Chile and Peru a number of
Americans had formed what was called
the Peruvian Company. They had bought
up the rights of the heirs of Cochet and
Landreau and were attempting to make
the Peruvian government pay back some
thing of the enormous sums claimed by
them as heirs of Cochet and Landreau.
1t is from the prospectus of this company,
which was given me before leaving the
United States by Col. Dick Thompson, our
former secretary of the navy, that the
above statements are taken. This prospec-
tus was not intended to be given to the
newspapers, and the extent of the scheme
has, I think, never been published It's
advocates brought the matter before Con-
gress. Secretaries of State Fish and Evarts
both made reports upon it, and President
Hayes in one case called the attention of
Congress to it. 1t never made any head
way out here, and it is now, / suppose,
dead, for the guano islands were given over
to the Peruvian Corporation, an English
syndicate, years ago as part consideration
of it's assuming the Peruvian foreign debt.
Peru is practically bankrupt country, but
when the claim was made it was rich, and
the claimants expected to get at least
large part of the half billion dollars to
which they said they were entitled under
the law.
Guano is not worth so much to-day as it
was years ago. The product is now COM
parativey nothing. Other fertilizers have
taken its place, and its price is less than
half what it once was There have been
times when this bird manure was sold for
500 ton. To-day it can be bought, am
told, for $50 to $40 ton. The first shipment
to Europe was made more than fifty years
ago. At that time twenty barrels of guano
were taken to Liverpool and tried on a
farm near that city. The result was such
that orders were sent hack for more and