ught
by every ship's crew, together with unheard of curiosities from
every savage shore, gave the community of Salem a rare alertness of
intellect."

It was a Salem bark, the Lydia, that first displayed the American
flag to the natives of Guam in 1801. She was chartered by the Spanish
government of Manila to carry to the Marianne Islands, as those dots on
the chart of the Pacific were then called, the new Governor, his family,
his suite, and his luggage. First Mate William Haswell kept a diary in a
most conscientious fashion, and here and there one gleans an item with
a humor of its own. "Now having to pass through dangerous straits," he
observes, "we went to work to make boarding nettings and to get our arms
in the best order, but had we been attacked we should have been taken
with ease. Between Panay and Negros all the passengers were in the
greatest confusion for fear of being taken and put to death in the dark
and not have time to say their prayers."

The decks were in confusion most of the time, what with the Governor,
his lady, three children, two servant girls and twelve men servants,
a friar and his servant, a judge and two servants, not to mention some
small hogs, two sheep, an ox, and a goat to feed the passengers who were
too dainty for sea provender. The friar was an interesting character. A
great pity that the worthy mate of the Lydia should not have been more
explicit! It intrigues the reader of his manuscript diary to be told
that "the Friar was praying night and day but it would not bring a
fair wind. His behavior was so bad that we were forced to send him to
Coventry, or in other words, no one would speak to him."

The Spanish governors of Guam had in operation an economic system which
compelled the admiration of this thrifty Yankee mate. The natives
wore very few clothes, he concluded, because the Governor was the only
shopkeeper and he insisted on a profit of at least eight hundred per
cent. There was a native militia regiment of a thousand men who were
paid ten dollars a year. With this cash they bought Bengal goods,
cottons, Chinese pans, pots, knives, and hoes at the Governor's store,
so that "all this money never left the Governor's hands. It was fetched
to him by the galleons in passing, and when he was relieved he carried
it with him to Manila, often to the amount of eighty or ninety thousand
dollars." A glimpse of high finance without a flaw!

There is pathos, simple and moving, in the stor