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LONEL Y BAKER. 
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Five Month* On A 
SOUTH SEA ATOLL 
j 4. 'Vi- t .*• 
.. <I I # II MII l ll [ I—« 
yiirnt^ St? Writes* 
m 
«r 
months oa 
pari of tile recent Comm ex* 
^edition to three •awtarli) 
Wanti* In It he telle some of 
the life on the tiny atoll. Next 
week he will tell of the 
dangerous departure from 
Baker and the farther entice 
of the schooner Kinkajou.) 
By JULES RODMAN 
Besides the four Kemehameha 
school boys stationed by the U. S. 
department of commerce, Baker 
island boasted a tremendous 
population of rats, booby birds 
and hermit crabs. 
When Harris and I went ashore 
the first night to pitch our tent a 
great ring of rats circled us, stay* 
ing just without the beam of our 
lantern. When Harris went off to 
the Ksm boys* camp and I 
dropped wearily into my army 
cot, the mis advanced hungrily 
and swarmed over our supplies, 
squealing greedily among them¬ 
selves. 1 awoke once in the night 
to find one perched on my cheat. 
Neat day, before the Kinkajou 
left, we took a reconnoitering tour 
about the island. A little north of 
camp we found the crumbling 
wooden wheels of a cannon now 
on view at the Bishop museum. 
The cannon was used, I found, to 
salute whalers and guano ships 
in the days of the guano industry 
on Baker. Inland we came upon 
a large fresh water pool, evident¬ 
ly blasted out of the coral, and 
found the water a little acrid but 
not unpalatable, teeming with 
minutae. 
ALOHA TO KINKAJOU 
When it came time for the Kin¬ 
kajou to leave, isolating us for 
weeks on the tiny island, we 
gathered on. the reef and as the 
schooner began to pull away sang 
“Aloha Oe” as lustily as the lumps 
in our throat would permit, 
Back at the camp we piled our 
provisions on the table and stood 
its legs in tins of water to keep 
rats and ants away. Though no 
rats reached the supplies several 
quarts of water were splashed 
out of the five-gallon tins in their 
efforts scramble up. 
Near camp were four brick cis* 
terns once used by guano men 
and we decided to ^a* two tor 
storing rainwater and foi^tat- 
proof gardens. In the cisterns, 
about 13 feet high, we came upon 
a note of tragedy. 
Par some strange reason booby 
birds for perhaps generations had 1 
been lured into tie cisterns, 
alighting inside th4 walls. As the 
big sea birds need So to 40 feet of 
runway from which to take off 
into the air, all had been trapped 
inside. We found the bone! and 
skeletons of at least 4,000 birds 
lying two feet deep in the cis¬ 
terns! Strangly, too, most of the 
bones were piled on one side. In¬ 
dicating that the starving birds 
had crawled to that side when 
dying to catch the last rays of 
run. 
After cleaning out the cisterns 
we went to the brackish pool and 
planted there some taro, the first 
planting of our colonising venture. 
We later planted rhytabaga, beets, 
potatoes, carrots, onions and tur¬ 
nips in two of the cisterns. 
I had noticed a pair of boobies 
nesting near the camp and start¬ 
ed to systematically borrow their 
eggs. After taking an egg I watch¬ 
ed the female search stupidly for 
it for as much an hour before 
concentrating op a new one. The 
boobie can show perplexity and 
dismay just as well as man, and 
in such a seemingly exaggerated 
way as to be ludicrous. They 
keep their throats pulsating like 
a harp string most of the time 
they are brooding. 
FDLtHX FRIGATE BIRDS 
Better fliers than the boobies 
were the frigate birds. One can 
watch their graceful course for 
hours at a time as if under a 
spell. But on the ground they are 
transformed to vile-smelling, vul¬ 
ture-like creatures with dowdy 
feathers and ungainly wings. 
The red-pouched males slouch 
around in dull, apathetic groups, 
most of the time either sleeping 
or ridding themselves of lice, only 
bestirring themselves to steal a 
few fish from incoming boobies. 
One may know every evening, by 
the cries of pursued boobies that 
these shabby highwaymen are 
swooping down upon returning 
fishers to relieve them of the 
day’s catch. The frigates fly next 
to the boobies, their bill* together, 
until the booby regurgitates a 
fish or two which it was bring¬ 
ing home for the «AJdu. 
One day I saw what seemed 
Vm only retaliate the* boobies 
Ymi apparently mmg ht of in the 
r^mhy with They had 
the tat* 4 * flying over 
: ol near turn- camp and re- 
*:•- *ating fish mio the water, 
the frips.^ swooped down- 
Of 
material 
and were trapped if they touched 
the water, which weighed Jjtig** 1 
down too much to Sosnettae* 
— I., r li ni -:. - '■’•’-v-r t 
thrM or lour .wor# troppod ia ' 
on# day. H tfcoy won scnalblo 
•nough net to tfcngb around try¬ 
ing to got out, but aat around 
until their wing, were dry, one 
valiant effort would pull them 
out. Foolish ones were doomed to 
starvation. Perhaps their inade¬ 
quate protection against water, as 
well as having no webs cm 
feet, have forced them to 
Pirate*. v 
BITS OF AfcCHiOLOar 
On the island I found 
round and oval pieces of 
pumice which likely Boated 
from some obscure oceanic 
heaval in Java, Japan, or 
Central America. It oca 
me that these lumps of 
among many other 
this place which would ha 
abled a sizeable group of 
to exist there would have 
ed excellent abrasive 
well as floats for fish nets. 
A resume of the flora, fauna, 
marine life and materials avail¬ 
able in pre-European times would 
indicate that tills island was as 
rich as many of the Tuamotus, 
with the exceptions of breadfruit, 
pandanus, coconut and taro which 
could conceivably have been 
transported in their canoes as has 
been done in other parts of Poly¬ 
nesia with great success. 
PLENTY OF MATERIAL 
There is a greet amount of 
palatable brackish water' and 
many pools where rainwater is 
caught. Basalt, coral, tortoise 
shell, oysters, tridetnas, hard and 
soft sandstone and sharks are in 
such abundance as to insure adzes, 
^ fish hooks, utensils, and even a 
frail catamaran to explore the 
outside waters. Logs occasionally 
drift ashore from which a sea* 
worthy canoe could have been 
built. If no plants were cultivated, 
pig weed, which grows in profu¬ 
sion, would afford that very nec¬ 
essary constituent of the bal¬ 
anced diet. Besides* birds and eggs 
and ti ah could be had in un- 
limited quantities. Surely the is¬ 
land Is richer la resources than., 
Necker, tjhat bleak little reck' 
north of Kauai where it ia esti- 
mated S® to 50 persons lived for 
several decades* 
One day f flowed the north 
reef andfstw Its matfvels for the 
first tins#* It was alive with eels, 
rs, cowrie sheila, 
algae. There were stays 
heads from wrecks, 
all but complete oxidized. Along 
the reef were stratified hits of 
sandstone probably dialed gad 
from v ;ihe mountain mass under¬ 
lying Wte mml shelves. * 
On September if I was awak¬ 
ened at sunrise by the chugging 
of a motor launch. It was a boat 
from the Itasca end ashore came 
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