Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania

Part Ii of the Book Deals with Oceania--More Especially with Our Island

possessions in the Pacific Ocean. It presents the salient features of the ocean grand division in the light of most recent knowledge.

The author wishes to give credit to Mr. Jacques W. Redway, F.R.G.S., for suggesting the subject of Part I and for the inspiration he received from the distinguished geographer in developing the subject.

J. C. G.

Oakland, California, December 25, 1912.

CONTENTS

Part I--Wealth of the World's Waste Places

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER I. THE WEALTH OF THE ARID SOUTHWEST 4 II. THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 27 III. YELLOWSTONE PARK 35 IV. TWO PREHISTORIC CEMETERIES--GIANT REPTILES AND GIANT TREES 51 V. DEATH VALLEY 58 VI. THE MINERAL WEALTH OF THE ANDES 67 VII. THE CZAR'S GREATER DOMAIN 82 VIII. THE MYSTIC HIGHLANDS OF ASIA 97 IX. THE PRIMAL HOME OF THE SARACEN 105 X. THE SAHARA 115 XI. POLAR REGIONS--THE CONQUEST OF THE ARCTIC 128 XII. POLAR REGIONS--ANTARCTICA 147 XIII. ICELAND, THE MAID OF THE NORTH 160 XIV. GREENLAND 170 XV. WHERE THE TWO GREAT OCEANS MEET 175 XVI. RECLAIMABLE SWAMP REGIONS 183 XVII. STRANGE ROCK FORMATIONS--NATURAL BRIDGES 190 XVIII. STRANGE ROCK FORMATIONS--TABLE MOUNTAIN OF CALIFORNIA 195 XIX. STRANGE ROCK FORMATIONS--GIBRALTAR 199 XX. THE BAKU OIL FIELDS 206 XXI. THE SOUTH AFRICAN DIAMOND FIELDS 211

Part Ii--Oceania

XXII. THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC 226 XXIII. AUSTRALIA 233 XXIV. THE GREAT BARRIER REEF 244 XXV. THE GOLD FIELDS OF AUSTRALIA 250 XXVI. TASMANIA 258 XXVII. NEW ZEALAND 262 XXVIII. SAMOA AND FIJI 270 XXIX. THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS 277 XXX. GUAM 285 XXXI. THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 289 XXXII. THE DUTCH EAST INDIES--JAVA 301 XXXIII. THE DUTCH EAST INDIES--SUMATRA AND CELEBES 311 XXXIV. BORNEO AND PAPUA 319

ILLUSTRATIONS

The great Rainbow natural bridge of southern Utah Frontispiece

PAGE

Map of Islands of the Pacific Facing 1

Mohave Desert, California. Buzzards' Roost 6

Gila monsters 9

A giant cactus in Arizona 12

The Roosevelt Dam, Arizona, showing south bridge and spillway 17

Shoshone Project, Wyoming 25

The Grand Canyon of the Colorado 29

Grand View Trail 33

The Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, looking down canyon from Grand Point 37

The Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Mammoth Hot Springs, Summit Pools 45

The Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Beehive Geyser 47

The Brontosaurus 53

The Allosaurus 55

Twenty-mule borax team 61

The Oroya Railroad, Peru, showing four sections of the road 73

Llamas resting 77

Silver-smelting works at Cassapalca, on the Oroya Railroad, Peru, 13,600 feet high 79

Fishing for sturgeon through the ice of the Ural River. Catching the material for caviare 83

Gathering salt at the mouth of the Ural River 87

Driving over the tundra in winter 91

Train on the steppes of Russia 95

Dunkar Spiti, Himalaya Mountains, India 99

Khaibar Pass, the gateway to India 107

On the sands of the desert 117

The yak not only serves as a beast of burden, but furnishes milk, butter, and meat 103

A group of Arabs with their dromedaries 111

A caravan crossing the desert on the road to Jaffa 125

Peary's ship, the Roosevelt 137

Commander Robert E. Peary and three of his Eskimo dogs on the Roosevelt 141

Musk ox 144

An antarctic summer scene 149

The penguin defies the cold 153

Street in Reykjavik, Iceland 163

North Cape, Iceland 167

Stone igloos on the bleak coast of Greenland 171

A large iceberg 173

A group of Eskimos in south Greenland 174

The Straits of Magellan. Cape Pilar is the extreme western end 177

Fuegians 179

The Everglades of Florida 184

Group of Seminole Indians in the Everglades of Florida 187

The Devil's Slide, Weber Canyon, Utah 191

Witch Rocks, near Echo Canyon, Utah 193

This strong and impregnable place is the Rock of Gibraltar, and the city nestling at its base, Gibraltar 201

Landing-place for commerce on the Caspian Sea 209

Open workings of the diamond mine, Kimberley 219

Sorting gravel for diamonds in the Kimberley mine 223

A Malay girl 229

A Malay boy 231

A giant fig-tree, 140 feet in circumference 235

A mother kangaroo with a young kangaroo in her pocket 237

An Australian emeu 239

Homestead and station in Young district, Australia 243

The Great Barrier Reef of Australia, the most remarkable animal structure in the world 247

Melbourne is the largest city of Australia and contains nearly half a million people 257

Maori pa, or village 263

The Petrifying Geyser, New Zealand 265

Native canoe, Fiji Islands 275

General view of Volcano House, Kilauea, Hawaii 279

A lake of white-hot molten lava. The volcano of Mauna-Loa, Hawaii 281

Native ploughing in rice-field, Guam. One may find rice-farms as skilfully cultivated as those of Japan or China 287

The carabao, harnessed to a dray or wagon, shuffles along 291

The harbor of the city. Scene on the Pasig River, Manila 295

Extracting indigo in Ilocos Province, Philippine Islands 297

Manila hemp as it is brought in from the country 299

A breadfruit tree in Java 303

Coffee-drying in Java 309

Natives in the jungle, Sumatra 313

A jungle, scene in Sumatra 316

WEALTH OF THE WORLD'S WASTE PLACES AND OCEANIA

PART I. Wealth of the World's Waste Places

WEALTH OF THE WORLD'S WASTE PLACES

INTRODUCTION

There is a great wealth of literature about what we call the world's productive lands--that is, the densely peopled lands that yield grain, meat, sugar, fruit, and all the various foodstuffs. In any well-equipped library we may find great numbers of useful books that will tell us all about the places where cotton, wool, and silk are grown, or where coal and iron are mined. All these lands are the dwelling places of many people. Networks of railways connect the various cities and villages, and probably a majority of the people living in them have travelled in and about much of the area of these lands.

A large part of the earth's surface is commonly called "unproductive." As a rule this is only another way of saying that such parts of the world produce little foodstuffs. We must not take the word "unproductive" either too literally or too seriously, however, for Dame Nature has a way of secreting some of her choice treasures in places so forbidding and so desolate that only the most resolute and daring men even search for them. For instance, the mineral once much used by the makers of carbonated or "soda" water comes from a part of Greenland that is so bleak, cold, and inhospitable that no human beings can long exist there unless food and fuel are brought them from afar off. The famous "nitrates" of Chile are obtained in the fiercest part of the Andean desert. Not only the food but the water consumed must be carried to the miners, who are but little better than slaves. Most of the gold and silver is obtained in regions that are unfit for human habitation. The largest diamond fields in the world are in a region that will not produce even grass without irrigation--a region that would not be inhabited were there no diamonds. From the most inhospitable highlands of Asia comes a very considerable part of the precious mineral, jade. Death Valley, in the southern part of the United States, on account of its terrific heat, is perhaps the most unhabitable region in the world, but the borax which it produces is used in every civilized country. And so we might name regions by the score that are practically unhabitable, which nevertheless produce things necessary to civilized man.

We call them "waste places," but this is far from true. For the greater part they are quite as necessary as the places we call fertile. Of foodstuffs, for instance, the greater part of the Rocky Mountain highland produces not much more than the State of New York. Yet the presence of this great mountain wall diverts the moist warm air from the Gulf of Mexico northward, making the Mississippi basin one of the foremost granaries of the world. The absence of rain in the west slope of the Peruvian Andes makes much of the western part of Chile and Peru a desert. But that same absence of rain makes the nitrate beds possible; for had there been yearly rains, the nitrates long since would have been leached out. So, the lands the nitrates now fertilize are far greater in area than that of the region of the nitrates.

Then, perhaps, we turn our eyes oceanward. What! wealth in these great wastes? Most certainly, and indispensable wealth at that. Let us forget for a moment that the oceans produce about as much meatstuffs as the land; this is really the least important feature about them. The oceans produce one thing that is absolutely necessary for every living thing almost every hour of the day, and that is fresh water. Every drop of fresh water that falls on the land is born of the ocean. Even the cold, polar oceans are indispensable to life, for their waters are constantly flowing out into the warmer oceans, thereby tempering the water of the latter and preventing it from being too warm for living things.

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