Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1898-08-20

| breeding season of ten weeks about twenty
| eight pounds. Other birds produce more,
| and the many little deposits throughout the
| ages have made these vast quantities.
! 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 500 tons OF such
| skins We're excavated from one guano de-
| post. The birds which make the guano
| are of many kinds One of the chief species
| is the pelican. 1 have seen these ungainIy,
| big-billed birds III such focks that they
| fairly darkened the face of the ocean as
| they flew over it. They feed upon the
| fishes, and wherever you See a flock of
| pelicans you may be sure 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
hsh- 1hey are the gluttons OF the sea and
air, ana often gorge themselves TO such an
extent that they cannot rise from the
water, but remain there until sufficient of
| their food has digested 10 tighten their
| weight. About the Lobos Islands there are
| always millions of pelicans. The waters
are black wiki them, ana as you near the
islands you see them by the thousands
seated on the rocks. They seem to be So
c1able creatures aud they hunt in focks
They are but little afraid of man. and as
you near the islands they seldom move
without you go right among them. The
suano of the Lobos Islands is found IN
often vary in thickness from two 10 fifteen
1eet The sand is shoveIed off and the
Suaho Is then taken out. As ii is dug into
a strong smell OF ammonia rises and the
men generally wear iron masks over their
faces to keep the ammoniae dust ont Of
thelr mouths, noses and lungs The stuff
Is "a good deal like fine sand and 1t is very
penetrating. The guano is first loaded on
trucks and carried on a tramway to the
shore, where 1t is transferred to the shfns
TO pc taken to Europe or America am
tod that shfpioad of guano does not smell
at all badly after a few days The am
ulohla OF the upper crust passes off and
You cannot notice the filthiness of the
cargo Without going down into the hold
Claim for Hundreds of Millions.
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 then,
to enrich the worn out lands of the clio
world. The deposits however, were not
thought to be of value by the Peruvians
Frenchman named Cochet called attention
to them and claimed one-third of all the
product by right OF discovery He tray
eled from place to place and picked ont
Islands fr' m which 1t is said that more
than S1,200 100000 worth of guano was
sold. He was declared by the Peruvian
congress as the true discoverer of the beds
and uses Of guano, and in 1919 a grant of
900 tons OF guano was voted him. He
lever got It, however, and although his
claim by right of discovery. which ac-
cording to their Peruvian law, gave tie
dlscoVerer one-third, aggregated over s4o0-
Voo,ooo. he died in poor house in Paris