4 



26 



The National Geographic Magazine 



Island ' ' and ' ' Roca Coral. ' ' Two Brit- 

 ish warships, with flags for possession 

 purposes, went on a hunt for them in 

 1837 and before, but found nothing, al- 

 though they reported some signs indi- 

 cating that land was near by. In 1899 

 the Albatross was sent by our govern- 

 ment to make another search. No isl- 

 ands were found. 



"In March, 1 902 , Capt. Robert T. Law- 

 less, commanding the steamship Austra- 

 lia, on his way to San Francisco from 

 Tahiti, reported passing two patches of 

 what no doubt was shoal water. 



' ' This observation did much to revive 

 interest in the question of the existence 

 of islands in that part of the ocean. 



' ' Certain incidental circumstances had 

 led by chan ce to the revival of the gen- 

 erally forgotten mysterious fate of the 

 United States sloop- of -wax Levant, which , 

 having sailed on September 18, i860, 

 from the port of Hilo, Hawaii, for the 

 port of Panama, has never since been 

 heard from, by any trace whatever, un- 

 less it be in certain wreckage found 

 on the south shore of Hawaii in June, 

 1 86 1 , there and then identified by local 

 authorities as wreckage from the Le- 

 vant. 



' ' I had the honor to bring the matter 

 to the attention of President Roosevelt 

 in June, 1903, and thereafter, on pre- 

 sentation of the known facts at the Navy 

 Department, the Secretary of the Navy, 

 Mr Moody, determined to send an ex- 

 pedition as soon as one or more suitable 

 vessels could be spared for the service, to 

 settle finally the question of the exist- 

 ence or non-existence of any shoal, reef, 

 or island in the doubtful region. 



" The newly built cruiser Tacoma, on 

 her trial trip from San Francisco to Hon- 

 olulu, was ordered to make a detour in 

 that region in the latter part of May of 

 this year. According to the report of 

 her commander, R. F. Nicholson, search 

 for the island was made for four days, 

 during which neither land, shoals, nor 

 signs of land were seen ; in fact, the lo- 



cality was remarkable for the total ab- 

 sence of birds. 



' ' These results throw no light on the 

 mysterious fate of the Levant. The 

 ship's company might have landed 

 without the loss of a single life, in which 

 event there might still be some sur- 

 vivors, whose chances of living till now 

 on a fairly habitable and healthy island 

 might and perhaps have been more fa- 

 vorable than elsewhere. 



' ' I may venture to recall the inter- 

 esting incident that Edward Everett 

 Hale's Philip Nolan, ' The Man With- 

 out a Country,' ended his romantic 

 career on the Levant on this her last 

 and fatal vo3~age. There may have 

 been a whole ship's company of men 

 now without a country cast away on 

 this mysterious island nearly forty- four 

 years ago, some of whom may be still 

 watching for a sail. This would, in- 

 deed, be a marvelous thing, but it is 

 not beyond the range of possibility. 

 The mutineers of the Bounty lived on 

 Pitcairn Island eighteen years before 

 they were found there, and the extreme 

 and solitary isolation of this supposed 

 land would account for the long undis- 

 covered seclusion of the castaways." 



Count Joachim of Pfeil and Klein 

 Kllguth, in speaking on ' ' the rise and de- 

 velopment of the German colonial posses- 

 sions," told how geographers were re- 

 sponsible for some East African colonies. 



' ' Many of the present German pos- 

 sessions were acquired without the con- 

 sent of the government. In 1884 Dr 

 C. Peters and myself took steerage pas- 

 sage to Zanzibar and went to what is 

 now German East Africa. Our steer- 

 age passage was to deceive English and 

 other Europeans. Dr Peters and Dr 

 Juhlke returned to Berlin to persuade 

 the government to assume formal pos- 

 session of the land we acquired through 

 treaties with native chiefs. I remained 

 in possession. The territory we had 

 acquired was about the size of German}*. 

 Since the area has been doubled." 



