rtable as
the best liners. There are a big exercise deck and a reading-room with
plenty of books. Not the least important part of the equipment is a
self-playing piano and a good assortment of music.

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

There is not very much to see after one reaches Guam. One village is
just about the same as all the others. Perhaps half a dozen huts are
built of mud, or possibly of coral limestone; the rest are made of
bamboo frames covered with palm--all in one room in which the family
and the pig live.

Agana, however, is a village of six or seven thousand people. It is laid
out in streets which are fairly regular. They are deep with dust during
the dry season, and with mud the rest of the year. There are several
government buildings which are neat and trim, two or three churches,
several school buildings, and a few stores. Most of the people one meets
on the street speak Spanish; a few speak English. English is the coming
language, however; for the schools are there to stay and every one of
the fifteen hundred youngsters who attend school carries away a little
English. A fine road bordered with palms connects Agana with Apra, seven
miles south.

There is not much to see in Guam. The scenery is much like that of every
island in that part of the Pacific. About the only diversion of the
soldiers stationed there is hunting, which is pretty good if one is
content to hunt deer and wild hogs. Artistic sportsmen might prefer the
deer, but all the real fun is the share of the hog-hunters. The hogs are
savage beasts when cornered; they likewise are full of animal cunning.

Along the coast lowlands one may find rice-farms as skilfully cultivated
as those of Japan or of China. Most of the rice is consumed on the
island; however, copra, or dried cocoanut, is an export, and its sale
brings enough money to the natives to purchase the cloth and other goods
needed. Since American occupation the cacao tree has been cultivated,
and cocoa bids fair to be the chief export in the near future.

The government of Guam is better under American rule than at any time in
the previous history of the island. When the late Admiral Schroeder was
governor of Guam he consulted his log-book and discovered that he was
altogether too far away from Washington to be tied to rules and
regulations, or to be tangled up in official red tape.