The San Francisco call., 1898-06-24
ANNEXATION BIOGRAPHY.

T is probable that no other question before
 our people has depended on ignorance, prejudice and misstatement as the annexation of Hawaii. It was dead issue until Deweys victory in Manila Bay revived it. It was resurrected, panoplied in falsehood.
 When it was up before an argument made for it was that Honolulu the shortest route between this city and Hongkong and Yokohama. Senator Perkins himself disposed of that by showing the shortest route to be nearly 1000 miles north ot the Sandwich Islands In the prospect of temporary or permanent occupation of the Philippines the an- nexationists came up again with the shortest route to Manila via Honolulu, and the old argument now stated in the form of a military necessity.
 The Oakland Board of Trade addressed to Con- gress petition, to which Lave referred, demand ing annexation the shortest route to the Philip pines idea In answer to our criticism ot this ex- hibition of geographical ignorance the Oakland Board of Trade exhibits a statement by Lyman Bridges in which the distance from San Francisco to Manila via Honolulu given at 6ooo miles, and that from San Francisco to Unalaska at 2o35, Unaaska to Yokohama at 5000 and Yokohama to Manila 1900, making total of 7435 miles, and showing 535 miles
 in favor of the Honolulu route. Just why Mr. Bridges dverged to Yokohama, or why, while di- verging he did not go to Seoul Vladvostok, Is not explained.
 But he is not the only geographer. MT. John Haynes appears in the Chronicle with a desire to use up Senators White and Pettigrew on this mileage question Mr. Haynes says that these Senators state what is grossly untrue" about the mileage of the two routes and proceeds to prove it by the map To quote his nexactness exactly he says:
 "An air line drawn from San Francisco to the northern end of the island of Luzon passes about four degrees or 24o nautical miles, north of Honolulu, while Unalaska is twenty degrees or miles north of the same line Yet the Senator figures that the Unaaska route is shorter by Boo miles; that is, the Senator contends that the greater the divergence from straight line the shorter the distance between two points"
 Reading this, one is convinced that MT. Bridges and Mr. Haynes went to school to teacher who taught that the world is round fat and that they took it fiat, hence MT. Bridges zigzag by sea and Mr. Haynes air line cast upon the waters, and his innocent prattle of degrees in discussing and west mileage the surface of the globe.
 If these two gentlemen whose geography is ante Ptolemaic who seem not have heard of Copernicus and to whom Maury is unknown, will inquire they will learn that the world is round that in sailing and west erdians of longitude crossed, not degrees of latitude They will learn that these meridans converge at the poles they widest apart at the equator and continually approach each other until they at the poles. Sailing directly around the earth east and the greatest circumference is the equator and lessens the poles approached Hence to get the shortest distance between two points east and of each other in the Northern Hemisphere, if they are both upon the equator sail north curve, and if in the Southern Hemis- phere sail south This is circle navigation, which was explained by Maury and is so we'll understood by navigators and by all landlubbers who were taught that the world is round that they refuse to be taken in by Mr. Haynes "air line"
 In every ocean steamship company's office may be found map called Tracks for Fu-powered Steam Vessels" These the circle tracks, and by this map the distance between San Francisco and Manila via Unaaska is about 8oo miles less than by Homo lulu
 Congressman Grosvenor was taught that the world is round and that its and west diameter and cir conference decrease you go north or south from the equator therefore he admits Unaaska to be the shorter route, and so do Commodore Melville, Sen ator Perkins and everybody except those who were taught in a flat world school
 THE "POPUL AR" GOVERNMENT OF