Malden Island To-Day

Uninhabited Barren Rock Was Once World’s Most Valuable Guano Deposit

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, Sept. 11.

her return voyage to Tahiti from Christmas Island recently, the schooner Denys stopped for a day at Malden Island, the home of the mysteri ous temples of some past Pacific race.

Malden, at one time, was one of the most valuable guano islands in the world.

Owned by Great Britain, it is situated about 150 miles north-east of Starbuck Island, which is mid-way between Christ mas and Tahiti. Occupying an area of 35 square miles, the island is some 12 miles in length by six miles wide. It was dis covered by the warship Blonde in 1825.

Miss Beatrice Grimshaw, the well known Islands novelist, (who visited Malden Island in 1908) gives this inter

esting bit of history in her book In the Strange South Seas :

“Malden has had an interesting history.

In 1848, Captain Chapman, an American whaling master who lived in Honolulu (he was the founder of the Chapman family of Tahiti and father of the fam ous Lovina) happened to come upon Mal den during the course of a long cruise.

He landed on the island, found nothing for himself and his crew in the way of fruit or vegetables, but discovered the guano beds, and made up his mind to sell the valuable knowledge as soon as his voyage was over. Then he put to sea again and did not reach San Francisco for the best part of a year.

“Meantime, another American, Captain English, had found the island and its treasure. Wiser than Captain Chapman, he abandoned his cruise, and hurried at once to Sydney, • where he sold Malden for a big price to the trading firm who have owned it ever since.”

Captain Mervin, who has just visited Malden in the Denys, reports the island as uninhabited except by bands of pigs which live, apparently, on the eggs of myriads of sea birds that swarm there to make their nests. The place appears to have been hurriedly abandoned. The company s buildings (now falling into decay) are still full of all manner of merchandise. A pharmacy had its shelves full of bottles of medicine, and ware houses were still stocked with miscel laneous goods.

Captain Mervin did not permit his crew to disturb or carry away any of this material, as it is the property of the company which owns the island.

Malden has practically no trees and is therefore a blazing furnace; which must have been fatal to the working staff —as the large cemetery there bears witness.

Miss Grimshaw wrote: “Half a million hard cash has been made out of it in the last 30 years, and it is good for another 30.” That was in 1908.

In 193 <, Malden is a barren rock given back to the sea birds which have inhabi ted it for ages.