Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 307, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1914 — lonely Midway Island [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

lonely Midway Island

LIFE at a cable relay station on the westward course of empire Is loneliness sublime. There one watches day and night the swing back and forth of the siphon recorder of the Morse code, which brings to the cable hut the news of the world, its policies, its pulse of commerce, and every dot which comes in from the Orient must be relayed for its next leap to the waiting Occident, and every western dash must be sped onward as an eastern dash that the world may go ahead. That is Midway, a station on the Commercial Pacific ‘cable. Few have ever heard of this remote outpost. ,! ’ Out'at Midway is a vedette of civilization, two dozen men and women. The sun glare is over them; they all go goggled lest their eyes be burned in their sockets. Even variety has gone from their lives in idle lonely exile; there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning. Also the wind is not fitful; all day long for months on end it blows from just The same corner of the horizon and the sand which whirled In yesterday’s blast will dance the same endless whirl today and again tomorrow. The rains will come on their appointed days? just so many gallons will pelt down as this day a year ago and the clouds

•Will roll aside with strict observance of the calendar. Life is monotony; monotony stereotyped. Four times in the year comes a break. Once every ninety days the supply schooner comes from Honolulu, with mail from home, papers and fresh food; once in so often a new operator comes to take his trick at sending; once in so often comes the chance for weariness to get back to land where things happen and rules have exceptions. Here in picture and tn text is Midway, outpost of empire, relay station of news, wind-blasted sunburnt home of three and twenty pioneers. But there is no lack of those who would pioneer in the midst of the sea. At the executive offices of the cable company they wfH tell you that they have more applications for a Midway billet than they can fill. There is a flver year contract into which the operators on this distant post enter, but if the solitude proves too much for anyone on the island there are so many op the waiting list that relief is always granted. Part of Great Bird Preserve. ‘ Way back in 1867 the tiny group, then known as Brooks’ islands from their supposed discoverer, was annexed by the U. 8. S. Lackawanna because the Pacific Mail company thought it wanted it for a coaling station. The islands lie some fifteen hundred miles northwest of Honolulu and between them and the Hawaiian group is a string of uninhabited Islets that, together with Midway, have been set aside as a national seabird preserve patroled by a revenue cutter to keep off the poachers. Of the Midway group, Brooks Island is a roughly pear shaped lagoon atoll entirely surrounded by a barrier reef of coral, with two passages sufficients ly wide to permit vessels of considerable draft to enter the lagoon. The atoll is about two and a half miles long and varies in width from half a mile to two and a half miles, the greatest breadth being toward the southwest. The passages through the reef lie on the west and northwest sides. The lagoon is fully a mile and a half wide at its widest and completely surrounds what little land there is; • It is thickly sown with patches of coral, which In many large masses reaches close to the surface, but boat channels may be found by careful steering and there is no danger, since the .water is always still. The land Is found at the east side of the lagoon, two islands each little more than a mile long. Middle Brooks, or Eastern Island, rises to a height of about fifteen feet, coral sand thinly

covered with grass and low bushes. Lower Brooks, Sand island, about a quarter of a mite west, rises to the comparatively imposing height of fifty-five feet; but what it makes (ip in altitude it loses in vegetation, its covering of grass being much thinner. It is a. mile and a half long, threequarters of a mite wide.v. Glaring Coral Sand. The corate, on which the islets are based, of w£pse disintegration they are in fact composed, are principally meandrlnas and -madrepores, as shown by the specimens still growing in the lagoon as well as by therlragmeats in the dry soil which have not yet been reduced by the weather. The sand, which is the product of- the leaching of the dead coral by the rain, is a clear white, very glaring in’the bright sun and remarkably trying to the eyes. In the center and eastern part of the Sand island the disintegrating coral has been compacted by the rains into a stiff lime crust about a third of an inch thick and forming a glistening surface which requires considerable force to break. Oh the immediate shores of the island the sand is about eighteen inches deep before the fragments of coral begin to appear of any size; the higher levels are apparently

entirely aolian, mere dune drift of sand swept by the wind from the beaches; at any rate digging to such depth as. was possible in the loose and readily sliding material failed to disclose anything but sand. Water is nowhere visible, in fact there can be said to be no supply of fresh water at all. Pits along the beach will yield water at a depth of about four feet and this is potable, As is so commonly the case in the Line islands nearer the equator, this wafer is sea water, filtered and sweetened by percolation through the coral sand. One such pit will be found serviceable in general for about a months a brief life for a well, but matter of no great moment, since another pit may be dug to a fresh supply within a few feet Plenty of Birds and Fish. If the land la of little worth, the sea and the air bear an inordinate share of the burden of food for man. Small as the islets are, the number of birds passes all reckoning; one may mention a million merely as a convenient unit of measure.

The albatross grudges mankind the room to walk about in, the booby is as absurd and foolish and altogether well named on Midway as wherever found, the Sandwich tern is under foot and an excellent table bird, the bos'nbird and the frigate are found at certain seasons on their nests, and the plover and the curlew are in sufficient quantity to find their way to the bill of fare. lagoon is abundance of fish, cod, sea perch, the always toothsome mullet, mackerel and the gaudy coryphenas, so brilliant in their varied coloring that to put them into the pan seems almost to desecrate the rainbow by cooking it. The trepang, or beche-de-mer, may be had with no more exertion than that of picking its dark ugliness -from the clear bottoms of the tide pools, and those who have had oriental table experience recognize that it may be made Into the most savory of soups. A delicious cockle is somewhat sparsely found and many univalve mollusks afford a plentiful supply of palatable foods. In the crevices of the sea reefs which skirt the lagoon lie hidden many large crustaceans. These are rarely seen, for their habit is secretive; but a pot baited overnight with •somewhat high fragments of fish is usually found well filled in the morning and the size of the crustaceans runs rather higher than our best lobsters. They lack the strong claws gs the lobster; they are more of the squilla type, but the meat is very fins eating and abundantly wholesome.

CABLE STATION ON MIDWAY ISLAND