The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-09-10
ON MIDWAY ISLAND.

A Coral Reef in the Midi Pacific, Where Uncle Sam Maintains a Cable Sta
 ton.
 Five days out from Honolulu, writes
 George Kennan in the Outlook, we caught sight of the small, reef-er- circled sand dune which is known, on
 account of it's geographical position, as Midway smallest bit of land, Iperhaps, over which the Stars and Stripes float, and certainly the most dreary and desolate place inhabited by man in all the broad Pacific. Before
 the acquisition of the Philippines, not one American in 10000, probably, was Iaware of the fact that the United
 States owned territory in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, nearly 3,500 miles west of San Francisco; and yet the little atoll then known as Brooks
 Island" had belonged to Us for nearly forty years. It had no inhabitants, and therefore required no colonial ad- Iministration, but 1t was nevertheless, the first colonial possession that we acquired in the Pacific, away from the mainland, and for many years it was our remotest outpost in the direction of I the Orient Captain N. c. Brooks, of l the American ship Gambia, discovered I it in 1859. and although it was mere lsand-heap, less than two miles across and seemed to be absolutely worthless | he prudently annexed 1t, in the name l of the United States, and took such formal steps as were necessary to es- tablish national claim to 1t.
 For the next thirty years it remained
 uninhabited and almost unyisited; but l in 1867 it was examined by Captain
 Reynolds, of the United States cruiser
 Lackawanna, and in 1885,. if I remem-
 Der rightly, Norwegian ship was wrecked on it, and her survivors lived there for a period of about two years, gaining a scanty subsistence by col lecting birds eggs and catching fish.
 They were finally seen and taken off l by the crew of a Japanese merchant vessel who were cruising about in that
 part of the Pacific in search of guano deposits.
 Shortly before the annexation of the
 Hawiian group. the Pacific Mail Steam lship Company caused an examination l to be made of the island with a view to it's possible utilization as a coaling, lstation; but this idea was finally abanoned on account of the difficulty : of taking lighters in and out through l the narrow, rock obstructed channel which breaks the circle of the reef on the western side, and affords the only means of access to the shallow water 1 of the lagoon. When trans-Pacific cable was projected, however, this insignificant bit of United States territory in the vast watery solitude of
 the western ocean suddenly acquired importance and value, and in 1S03-- more than forty years after it's dis
 covery--it was made a cable repeating
 station, and became for the first time, an inhabited place. It now has apopu- lation Of ten or twelve mef1-nearly all | cable operators-and one solitary woman. s&~gs .7. #
 As seen from distance of three or four miles. Midway Island looks like a low, undulating drift of marble-dust,
 diversified with rounded, Undiscovered hillocks and encireled by a barrier-reef of jagged coral rock ten or twelve
 miles in circumference, over which the
 huge Pacific rollers break necessarily in clouds of spray and mist. Between the
 reef and the island there is a shallow lagoon half a mile to mile across,
 whose tranqual water varies in color
 from pea-green to a brilliant peacock
 emerald, and contrasts strangely with the dark ultramarine blue of the outer ocean. The low island which lies With-