Honolulu Star-Bulletin from Honolulu, Hawaii • 15

i a 11 i -Y" ft IIeBI 'ifJBllllllEKfl mmm HONOLULU'S moat distant suburb, Palmyra Island, is at last to be developed commercially. For a number of years the possibilities of this delightful littln spot have been discussed along the local waterfront. Various names have been connected with its exploitation, but nothing to the present time has come of all the rumors. Col. William Meng, V.C..

late of the British army, and Frank White, at one time assistant postmaster at Hilo, have leased the property from Judge Cooper nd are now taking steps which should make of Palmyra a commercial asset. Colonel Meng, a pioneer railroad and sugar man of South and Central Africa, with Mrs. Meng, who is a cousin of Judge Kemp of Honolulu, plan to go to San Francisco in the near future to take passage on the Tau-lusa, the new auxiliary schooner which is to take the place of the Kestrel on the Fanning Island run. This vessel will make hr first trip 1111 ACCORDING to the report of the navy department to the state department. given out in Washington on February 28, the cruise of the West Virginia "failed Li to Fanning direct from San Francisco where she is now having the at Palmyra en route.

frond some months on Their prop- enemies wnatever, tne rronas are rrMmUsZj Wv. TnCSKiK II hff iti a JJte jKaBBBaEaii aaaagWWWgeSBWgjriyi spend some months on their enemies whatever, the fronds are to show that any attempt had been made by any other nation to assert sovereignty over this Island." On March 4 following Francis Drake Acland, parliamentary under secretary of foreign affairs, In the British house of commons that Palmyra island had once been sold for a dollar (see Wilcox sale mentioned above) and that Its only inhabitants were land crabs. Discussing the news that the United States cruiser West Virginia had planted the Stars and Stripes on the island, he said Great had long since abandoned all interest in It. Acland was probably well posted in Pacific matters, being of the same family as Captain Acland, that made calls at Honolulu 26 years ago. Captain Rosehill, a Pacific trading skipper whose homo was here until his death a few years ago, in ign announcing that Palmyra, the British lion by taking dawn the sign IngiTig it to Honolulu for presentation to Luther Wilcox, i.be inwfu! owner of Palmyra.

wmm. 'iiil fit who commanded a British cruiser 1897 Visited the group where be discovered, ticked to a tre, a WE! I-; I belonged to the Briti-i crown wm ind warning all and sundry not to ind, or remove sny property from place. Captain Rosehill defied IKES I'W'- a COOPEB ISLET OHe OF THE MANY I5LET5 many shipwreck stories' of the Pacific "nterr on Palmyra, SHE COCONUTS ARE THE SOLE VEGETATION mitted to probata before the license, shifted the scene from imes struck the Calde-v rPef 40 from Pa'mvra Islanfl Kh had persons on board including two omen and several children All e-ot "shore in safety but the islet had "ttle vegetation except coconuts. ml finishing touches put on, stopping Colonel and Mrs. Meng plan to property, making a survey of its requirements.

The matter of machinery and equipment needed will then be determined upon. Arrangements are being made to use Gilbert Islanders as labor. xx oo THE outcome of this venture to turn Palmyra to financial account will be awaited with great Interest. Professor Rock, who visited the island in company with Judge Cooper some few years ago, pronounced the coconuts to be the finest he had ever seen, an opinion in which a celebrated Italian botanist concurs. Not only are the coconuts of finest quality and in sufficient numbers to make the property a paying one, but the fishing grounds arc very extensive.

Louis Becke, one of the great writers on the South Seas, mentions in one of his books a shark fishing expedition in which he participated in the waters about Palmyra, He relates that the sharks abounded there in incredible numbers and they had great success in their venture, utilizing the skins of the sharks and also their fins, which were dried and shipped to China. Professor Bock describes the principal isles of Palmyra in detail. Of Cooper islet, the largest and most of the group, he says: Cooper islet is practically divided into two islets, once undoubtedly separate. The eastern and western portions of this beautiful islet are densely wooded, while the middle portion is composed of loose coral clinkers. Ferns encroach on this coral flat but remain stunted.

On the border, the trees are cdvered with a morning glory" which appears to be very destructive, killing off and checking the growth of its supporter. The cocos form beautiful stands, with the falling nuts covering the ground several feet thick, and germinating everywhere. Thousands of coconuts had germinated in the actual salt water, on the edge of the lagoon, where they are being washed about by the tide. The sandy spits all along the lagoon side of this islet are covered with germinated coconuts in all stages of growth, till one reaches the dense ran MS perfect and not ragged as in Honolulu, where they are attacked by the coconut-leaf roller moth. The nuts of the Palmyra coconut are the finest and the biggest the writer has ever seen, which testimony is also given by the eminent authority, Dr.

O. Beccari of Florence, Italy." It is a singular fact that Palmyra is a part of the city and county of Honolulu. In the days of the monarchy when each of the big islands of Hawaii boasted its governor and there had been more or less acquiring of stray bits of land adjacent to the Hawaiian group, it was agreed that the next island annexed should belong to Oahu. This was done and Palmyra has ever since followed the political fortunes of Honolulu, although until the present time she has doubtless not been aware of it. oo By DANIEL LOGAN Palmyra Island has afforded news pabulum to Honolulu papers off and on, for 55 years.

Its other name is Legion, for printed descriptions within that period make Palmyra an archipelago of 34, of 42 and of nearly a hundred islands, the last mentioned article adding, "some fair sized and some no bigger than a biscuit." It is also in one account designated a "constantly changing little group," but whether this was intended to mean a parcel of playfully ambulating islets, the scene-shifting of sand dunes, the alternate building and breaking of the coral barriers, or merely the vagaries of hurried nautical mapmakers, the context does not show, except that the particular account does refer to a map drawn by a U. S. naval officer. Palmyra is the subject of charts, including one of the group itself by the British admiralty published In ISS4 and corrected in 18SS. Another chart gives its location in the North Pacific as related to San Francisco and Honolulu.

This shows it to be 1000 miles south of Honolulu with a slant to the west, but not so far as to justify the chronicled definition of southwest. Fanning island, with somewhat more importance in commerce and history, is 90 miles away from Palmyra on a line bearing southeast, and due south of Honolulu. Figuring as a weirdly fluctuating real estate speculation, as an inter- supreme court of New Zealand, June 29, 1866. In 1862 Palmyra had been aken over by the Hawaiian government, but when the Wilkinson bill was probated, four years later, the island apparently was regarded as belonging to the British crown. CLOSr IIP OF PALMYRA COCOMUT PAl Mb THE NUTS ACE OF THE HIGHEST QUALITY THAT GROW it mm ooo ONE of the most thrilling of th 'bout 18,91 the British bnrk Henry Days into weeks, the few shin's store saved were soon ex'iau'tod, and the party 'subsisted on lan Tabs, eels, coconuts.

grj and sal-scraped from the rocks, vdtrh wr boiled together in one pot. Cnptain Lattimore ultimately, as the only chance against all miserably perishing, sent the mate and four men off in a boat to look for succor. They shaped a course for Samoa, 1290 miles away, and 19 days later, lying exhausted in the bottom of their drifting boat, were picked up by a schooner off the coast of L'po-lu. Taken to Tutuila their ptory was heard by Captain Haywnrd, master of the Oceanic steamer Mariposa, then on voyage from Sydney to San Francisco, who diverted his ship to Palmyra, picking up the marooned Henry James company after they had suffered agonies for six weeks. On the way to Honolulu a collection was taken on board the Mariposa for their relief, amounting to $700, besides which they were supplied with clot Ing to replace their shreds of apparel.

Here the people were well taken care of by the British consul. Two hundred dollars of the Marlpoft. fund was sent to London for the five bravn men who had gone out and found succor. Captain Lattimore died six months after the ordeal from stomach trouble caused by the food eaten on the island. Captain Hay-ward was presented with a silver punchbowl by the British board of trade, which also rewarded the mate of the Henry James relief-finding boat with a gold medal, and himself and his four men with $lt Honolulu to Palmyra.

In the end of January, 1912, it was rumored in Washington that Great Britain had intention to take possession of Palmyra, the dispatch from the capital committing the error above denounced of saying it was in the "South Pacific." On February 27 the U. S. S. West Virginia returned to Honolulu from a mysterious cruise that proved to have been to Palmyra. A Washington dispatch to the New York Herald of that date stated that the island "was proclaimed part of Hawaii in 1582, but annexed by Great Britain in 1889," adding: "The fact that it was part of Hawaii makes it now logically part of the United States unless it is held that the annexation by Great Britain canceled the prior claim of Hawaii.

There is no inclination on the part of the state department to permit Great Britain to take over the territory without protest, so the navy de-partmf nt was consulted with a view to sending a warship there." In Honolulu it was stated that Governor Frear was the man that put the state department wise to the British menace to Judge Cooper's property in mldocean. Most that came out. here about the cruiser's visit was that there was abundance of fine fish and fowl at Palmyra. This had also been the report of Eben P. Low, who conducted an expedition in the schooner Concord, Capt.

Emil Piltz, to the place in 1910. Low represented a hui that contemplated developing the copra resources of the group, and on this score counted prevalent error that includes Hawaii should be corrected. Mention of the North Pacific chart above should be enough for this purpose, but most of the accounts written around the hydrographlc descriptions of Palmyra, like a great deal of the matter published about Hawaii both at home and abroad, erroneously places the islarids in thT "South Seas," whose northern boundary is the equator. This is of a piece with making references in Hawaii to Australasia as the "Antipodes." Honolulu's land antipodes lies in the vicinity of Berlin, and it was on account of this situation that, some years ago, the German astronomer. Professor Marcuse nas sent here to make calculations ff variations in the globe's revolutif-n oh Its axis.

In the deed the Island of Palmyra was described as being "situate in the Pacific ocean in longitude 161 deg. 53 min. west and latitude 6 deg. 4 min. north, or thereabouts." Wundenberg had bought it from W.

A. Kinney, whose ownership was a losing one, for he had paid $750 for the property in 18S6 to W. F. Allen, trustee of the Pacific Navigation Company and parted with it for $500. The company just named (A.

F. Cooke's) had secured it in 18S5 for "one dollar and other valuable considerations" from W. Luther Wilcox, the leading taro grower of Oahu. a brother of the Kauai sugar kings, who had more than local fame as Hawaiian interpreter in legislature and courts, and for years was district magistrate of Honolulu. Wilcox in turn had bought Palmyra for $550 from Henry Ka-haawinui and J.

Kaikala, the former grantor being the husband of Kalama, who was the widow of Johnson Wilkinson of Auckland, New Zealand. Recitals in this last deed show that the island was devised to Kalama by Wilkinson under a will ad national "bone" of discussion regarding the flag that rightly should fly over it having been annexed by Hawaii, by John Bull and by Uncle Sam; as containing a "treasure island" of enormous buried wealth, as a rendezvous of sporting fishers and land crab hunters, likewise of Japanese bird poachers, and as the threatened cemetery of shipwrecked mariners, Palmyra group has furnished many a readable story to news-eaters of the outside world as well as Hawaii. It has been a periodical source of journalistic interest for the past 16 years, or since Judge Henry E. Cooler of Honolulu in the year 1911, be then being the first judge of the first circuit court here, bought the coral domain. Not a year had elapsed from this conveyance before an international cloud, "no bigger than a man's hand," appeared over Palmyra.

This incident will appear in due course of the present compilation. Before proceeding with the annals of the tiny bunch of dots in the ocean, the varied romance of which is by magnitude in inverse ratio to its size, a ITS reputation as a repository of buried treasure arose from a legend connected with the Spanish ship Esperanza, alleging that the vessel had been captured by pirates soon after leaving Peru in 1S16. Six weeks after her capture the Esperanza was said to have struck on sunken coral somewhere in the middle of the Pacific. Building a small vessel from the wreck, the pirates are alleged to have laden it with a million and a htilf in gold the denomination presumably doubloons if the style of piracy tales is to be maintained. There was also some silver, for the story runs that the silver "was buried in a secure place" with "some of the gold." and the little cluster of Palmyra is supposed to have been that place.

A story told by the late Capt. F. D. Walker about an amusing deal Ka-mehameha made with the crew of the ship Santa Rosa, exchanging some choice rum for treasure from the vessel, was appropriated by Jack London who, wilh novelist's I I mm mm I 1 I I Mmm JUDGE COOPER paid $750 for the property. His grantor was Mrs.

Elsie M. Wundenberg, widow of F. W. Wundenberg, who in the late eighties was postmaster-general of the kingdom of Hawaii. and somber shade of the enormous groves of this magnificent palm.

Here -they appear to have no insect mmm Bj BWAh.