"WASHINGTON, December 10, 1867.
"Could you give me any information respecting such islands, if any, as
the government is going to purchase?"
It is an uncle of mine that wants to know. He is an industrious man and
well disposed, and wants to make a living in an honest, humble way, but
more especially he wants to be quiet. He wishes to settle down, and be
quiet and unostentatious. He has been to the new island St. Thomas, but
he says he thinks things are unsettled there. He went there early with
an attache of the State Department, who was sent down with money to pay
for the island. My uncle had his money in the same box, and so when they
went ashore, getting a receipt, the sailors broke open the box and took
all the money, not making any distinction between government money, which
was legitimate money to be stolen, and my uncle's, which was his own
private property, and should have been respected. But he came home and
got some more and went back. And then he took the fever. There are
seven kinds of fever down there, you know; and, as his blood was out of
order by reason of loss of sleep and general wear and tear of mind, he
failed to cure the first fever, and then somehow he got the other six.
He is not a kind of man that enjoys fevers, though he is well meaning and
always does what he thinks is right, and so he was a good deal annoyed
when it appeared he was going to die.
But he worried through, and got well and started a farm. He fenced it
in, and the next day that great storm came on and washed the most of it
over to Gibraltar, or around there somewhere. He only said, in his
patient way, that it was gone, and he wouldn't bother about trying to
find out where it went to, though it was his opinion it went to
Gibraltar.
Then he invested in a mountain, and started a farm up there, so as to be
out of the way when the sea came ashore again. It was a good mountain,
and a good farm, but it wasn't any use; an earthquake came the next night
and shook it all down. It was all fragments, you know, and so mixed up
with another man's property that he could not tell which were his
fragments without going to law; and he would not do that, because his
main object in going to St. Thomas was to be quiet. All that he wanted
was to settle down and be quiet.
He thought it all over, and finally he concluded to try the low ground
again, especially as he wanted to start a brickyard this time. He bought
a flat, and put out a hundred thousand bricks to dry preparatory to
baking them. But luck appeared to be against him. A volcano shoved
itself through there that night, and elevated his brickyard about two
thousand feet in the air. It irritated him a good deal. He has been up
there, and he says the bricks are all baked right enough, but he can't
get them down. At first, he thought maybe the government would get the
bricks down for him, because since government bought the island, it ought
to protect the property where a man has invested in good faith; but all
he wants is quiet, and so he is not going to apply for the subsidy he was
thinking about.
He went back there last week in a couple of ships of war, to prospect
around the coast for a safe place for a farm where he could be quiet;
but a great "tidal wave" came, and hoisted both of the ships out into one
of the interior counties, and he came near losing his life. So he has
given up prospecting in a ship, and is discouraged.
Well, now he don't know what to do. He has tried Alaska; but the bears
kept after him so much, and kept him so much on the jump, as it were,
that he had to leave the country. He could not be quiet there with those
bears prancing after him all the time. That is how he came to go to the
new island we have bought--St. Thomas. But he is getting to think St.
Thomas is not quiet enough for a man of his turn of mind, and that is why
he wishes me to find out if government is likely to buy some more islands
shortly. He has heard that government is thinking about buying Porto
Rico. If that is true, he wishes to try Porto Rico, if it is a quiet
place. How is Porto Rico for his style of man? Do you think the
government will buy it?