Perth Amboy evening news., 1921-12-28

Here is the cold geographical fact:
Almost contemporaneously with the
issue OF the mandate of administra-
ton for the Island of Nauru, famous
for its rich deposits of phosphate of
lime, was the ~rediscovery of the
great sulphur mountain of Vanua
Lava in the Banks group of the New
Hebrides."
But here also is a fairy tale of
science, a happy chemical coinci-
dence, of a problem in relatively"
suggests a bulletin from the Wash
ington, D.. c., headquarters of the
National Geographic Society.
Scene one might disclose little
American Polly Smith dropping PEN
MES in a box to take to Sunday
school to give teacher to send mis-
%sionaries to the heathen.' Scene two
might portray some waving grain
field of our fertile west, and a close
up show Farmer Blank buying fer
tilizer at the village store. And the
fertilizer enriched the soil, which
grew the grain, which sold for the
money, which little Polly Smith put
into the box to give teacher to send
missionaries to the heathen.'
Here q second geographical fact
must obtrude: The special agent
needed to change Nauru's phosphate
rock to a soluble state for sale to
farmers in Vauna Lava's sulphur "
At Worlds Jumping-OR Place.
Then the bulletin continues with
the following information about the
island of trees that grow on stills
where missionaries have gone. and
where we may get fertilizer-infor-
nation extracted from n commune
cation to the The Society by Rosa
mond Dodson Rhone:
'Nauru, or Peasant Island, is al
most at the j~umping-on place of the
world; it is not exactly East of the
sun and west of the moon but 1T is
almost the farthest east. being only
thirteen degrees west of the inter-
national date line, and 1t is a half
degree south of the Equator. 1t is
one Of the Line islands.
Before it fell to Germany it knew
no white rulers, but was governed
by its own immemorial laws. en-
forced by it's own chiefs; but white
influence had impigned upon it for
many years. Whaling ships from
New England ports called there and
traded firearms for drinking cocoa
nuts and island pigs. 1t was rather
u poor island in those far-off days,
before its great wealth was discov-
cred. 1t had no sandalwood or tor
toise shell; no pearls or beche-dc-
mer; not even copra, for copra was
not made in the Pacific before 1872
and cocoanut oil was not an article
of commerce..
Arose Dripping From the Sea.
"One day Nauru, like Aphrodite,
arose dripping from the sea. The
date of this emergence cannot be
more nearly indicated than ages ago,
and the term day is not limited to
twenty-four hours, but is to be con-
strued literally, like the days of
Genesis. The island may indeed
have been thrust suddenly into the
air, with all her lovely polyps gasp
ing and s~hriveling In the tropic sun.
and scarlet fishes and long-armed
octopi leaping affrighted out of the
exposed caves to the safe shelter of
the sea-, while slow-moving sea-ur-
chins and mollusks persisted in the
pot-holes and labyrinths of the
coral; or the process of elevation
may have been gradual, life in the
coral dying gradually at the emerged
top, while it remained in full vigor
just beneath the level of low tide.
al any AdtSt WINCH thS oPASN'p
was complete, when the fairy towers
and pinnacles and the unsunned
caverns of the sea had been lifted
into the blaze of the sun life at its
base beneath the sea continued un-
abated and the fringing reef was
slowly extended around it.
Look Like Aquarium Houses.
"At this period the island must
have looked like those fantastic ar
tifcial structures which we see in
aquariums.l No product of mans
construction could be more extrava-