The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-12-28

l
 Cape Verde group, Nov. 26, 1901
 A fugitive from justice, desiring tt efface himself from the minds of men
 could hardly find a better place thar
 this forgotten archipelago, isolated 1T
 mid-ocean, opposite the desert of Sa-
 hara. The nearest land is Cabo Verde
 "a desolate uninhabited promontory
 Juttlng out from the coast of Senagam-
 bia, three hundred and seventy miles
 eastward On the north, the nearest
 neighbors are the Canaries, nearly a
 thousand miles away. To the west
 ward the long swells of the Atlantic
 sweep, unobstructed, half way around
 the globe; and southward there is nc
 bit of discovered territory between this
 point and Antarctic ice-fields.
 As everybody knows, the Cape Verde
 group are southernmost islands of
 that mighty chain-beginning with the
 Azores and stretching irregularly down the western coast of Africa
 which the earliest geographers named
 Fortunatoe Insuloe C"Happy Isles" or
 "Isles of the Blest'D, because it was be- lieved that somewhere among them lay | the Elysian Fields, to which heroes re-
 paired after life's fitful fever, without the disagreeable necessity of dying. | Modern Spiritualists, by the way, and other followers of strange isms and ole- l gres, take heart of grace in the thought
 that Pliny, Ptolemy, Plutarch, Homer
 entertained ideas similar to their own | concerning the life to come--indeed l Wi ota rio1 int pF | cept in the place of future bliss. Sure l ly, those ancient philosophers must have had slight acquaintance with this
 portion of the Happy Isles," or they | would never have located their para | disc here! For penal colony, where | perpetual punishment is the sine qua
 non, the Ilhas Verdes would be ideal;
 but regarded in the light of Home, | Sweet Home'-a more forlorn and | heaven-f forsaken region, with more ob- | jectionable citizens and a worse eli
 mate, would be hard to find. There are | fourteen of the islands, and only seven
 of them are inhabited. They combine an area of little more than that of the state of Rhode Island, and their popu- laton is estimated at one hundred colored'' in the proportion
 of nineteen negroes to one white man. The climate is practically the same as the Saharan desert with an uncanny
 capriciousness of nature seldom seen beyond the dark continent. Water, ter everywhere, but not drop to
 drink" salt water stretching on all
 ides to the horizon-but no cooling
 streams. no lakes, no wells, sometimes absolutely no rain through years of awful drought, in which animals perish and agriculture, (never fourishing),
 dies natural death. The people de- pend upon condensation and the heavy, unhealthy dews of night for their SUD- ply of cooking and drinking water, and it's scarcity for lavatory purposes is the least of their troubles. Torrid heat pre- vails, varying scarcely five degrees from year to year, and neither the northeastern sirocco nor the southern
 monsoon bring any relief. Of course there is little vegetation; but with the strange inconsistency of the region you see everywhere clumps of gigantic bao- babs-among, the largest trees in the world-flourishing in the barren sand with Iuxuriance known only in the conservatory like jungles of Asia and Africa. Some authorities say that the archipelago owes it's name Ilhas Verdes, Green Islands, to these magnificent trees; and others assert that the name comes from the sea- weed, green as emerald, which covers the waters for miles around.
 The group has always belonged to Portugal-at least in modern times. 1 About a quarter of century before | Christ was born, Juba IT., king of Nu- midia, sent an expedition to explore | the Fortunate Tnsulae-a most inter- esting account of which has come down to us through Pliny. Then, after time. the islands passed out of notice | and for more than thousand years 1'e, mained apparently forgotten-except in with the submerged conti- nent, Atlantis. as referred to by Plato Solon and others Tn the year 1450 the Cape Verde group was rediscovered by Antonio de Noli a Genoese adventurer in the service of Prince Henry, of Por- tugal. They were uninha bited, and the new masters colonized them with ne- sroes from the African coast-which accounts for the darkly shaded popula- ion to- day Tn time the archipelago arose to the dignity of the province of Cape Verde, together with the cape of he name on the mainland opposite; md to this day is one of the cherished of the former great Portu- ,uese ecpire, which once had it's colo lies all around the world. The pro rince is ruled by a governor general, ent down from Lisbon, who exercises both civil and military power. He is assisted by two judges; and each little sland has also military commandant, | few soldiers and a number of sala- jed officials, such as police, alcaldi and directors. The capital lsed to be in this place-Porto Praya, ut was removed, half century or so go, to Mindello, on St. Vincent Island. ,laVery remained in full force, with all he horrors of Surinam or Santo Do- ningo, up to 1884, when the Portu- uese government set free the public laves and modified by law the condi- ion of those belonging to private indi- iduals. At that time seven or eight l Africans were held in 'invol- ntary servitude" in this little group; { nd doubtless there would have been | lany more had not hard labor, famine ( nd epidemics continually reduced the umber. The province of Cape Verde is ( l.. =