A(A« 
it in the American whaler Minerva Smyth. The ship Loper had been 
there in 1826, and Captain H. Forster, in the ship Jamaica, before that. 
. It was reported as Phoebe Island by Henry Foster, in the bark Sussex 
in 1843. 
Messers. Alfred G. Benson and Charles H. Jmfd, representing the 
American Guano Co., landed from the Hawaiian schooner Liholiho, 
February 12, 1857, to assert the company’s claim to the island. The 
U.S.S. St. Marys (Commander Charles H. Davis) landed, surveyed the 
island, and took official possession in the name of the United States, in 
August 1857. They reported that ten whalers had touched at the island 
between June 21 and August 16, 1857. So frequently did whalers visit 
Baker during one period that it became the custom to leave messages 
and letters there, in a covered box, to be picked up and delivered. 
j j) Hague, chemist with the American Guano Co., in a lengthy re¬ 
port on the phosphate islands calls Baker’s guano deposits the finest he 
had seen. They were worked continuously by the American Guano Co. 
from" 1859 to 1878, many thousands of tons of guano having been dug, 
carted across to the landing on tram cars, and loaded with great difficulty 
through the pounding surf onto schooners and clipper ships, which were 
moored precariously to buoys on the lee side. We cannot attempt to de¬ 
tail the activities, adventures and hardships of this period; or to tell of 
the many shipwrecks, although a fairly complete history has been pieced 
together froni scattered accounts. 
John T. Arundel and Co., a British firm, made this island their 
headquarters for guano digging enterprise in the central Pacific between 
1886 and 1891. 
The American colonists were landed from the Itasca, April 3, 1935. 
They have built a lighthouse, substantial dwellings, and have attempted | 
to grow various plants. One sad-looking clump of coconut palms was j 
jokingly called by the writer “King-Doyle Park/’ after two well-known 
citizens of Hawaii, his ship companions on the Taney in 1938. The 
clump was the best on the island, planted near a water seep. The dry j 
climate and sea birds, eager for anything upon which to perch, do not 
give trees or shrubs much chance to get started. 
***** 
CHAPTER 14 
Canton Island 3 C* 
* 
T , I Ca " t °" Isknd ,s the largest aud most northern of the Phoenix group. 
T lies 1630 nautical miles in a direction 30 degress west of south from 
Honolulu. Its northwestern point is 166 miles south of the equator. 
The island is an atoll, made up of a low, narrow rim of land sur¬ 
rounding a large shallow lagoon. Its shape has been likened to that of a 
pork chop. It is four and a half miles wide on the west, from which it 
narrows to the southeast point, which is nine miles distant from the 
northwest point. 
The rim of land varies in width from 50 to 600 yards, and in height 
from five to twenty feet. The ocean beach rises steeply from its fringing 
