240 J. D. Hague on the Guam Islands of the Pacific Ocean, 



3,300 to have been killed in one day by a few men employed 

 for the purpose. 



A species of small lizard was also found in great numbers on 

 Howland'a Island, some specimens of which I had preserved in 

 spirit, but the package containing them was lost on the voyage 



Remains of former visitors.—There are some interesting traces 

 on this (Howland's) island of former visitors or residents. Ex- 

 cavations and mounds in the centre of the island, among the 

 thickets of brushwood, referred to above, are evidently the work 

 of man. The most extensive of these excavations is several 

 hundred feet long, and about one hundred feet wide, and ten or 

 fifteen feet deep, forming a gully or ditch, on each side of which 

 the sand and gravel is carefully banked up and kept in its place 

 by walls laid up of coral stone, (blocks of beach and reef rock). 

 The trees themselves may possibly owe their existence here 

 to the originators of these works, for the sides of this gully are 

 covered by a growth of wood which, unless younger than the 

 rest, would show the trees to be of more recent origin than the 

 excavation. 



It is said to be of a species called by the natives of the Sand- 

 wich Islands "Kou,"* which abounds on many islands of the 

 J^acifac. In the same vicinity there are also the remains of what 

 were low, flat mounds of regular shape, formed of gravel and 

 walled up all around, being about a foot high, and just such as 

 i have observed are used by many South Sea Islanders for the 

 foundation and floor of their houses. In another part of the 

 island, near the western beach, some remains of a hut were found, 

 and near by the fragments of a canoe, some pieces of bamboo 

 and a blue bead. Here also was found, buried under a foot of 

 sand a human skeleton, the greater part of which, on being ex- 

 posed to the air, crumbled to dust, leaving only two or three 

 bones m condition to be preserved. 



On the south end of the island there is a foot-path laid to cross 

 a bed of coral debris or beach accumulations. The edges of the 

 corals being rough, sharp and painful to the feet, the paths 

 seems to have been laid for the convenience of passengers across 

 this end of the island. It is several hundred feet long, made of 

 nat, smooth stones, at convenient distances apart, for stepping 

 from one to the other. Thev were evidently laid by hand, as 

 they he ma direction which forms nearly a right angle with the 

 ridges made by the sea. It is probable that the originators of 

 these works were South Sea Islanders. It sometimes happens 

 that they are drifted off to sea by currents in their canoes, and 

 TA^t^ J^^^^ "^^^ ^^^^ ^e«° ^l^rown upon this island, ^o im- 

 plements or other traces of civilized people have been found. 



