The Ladrone group consists of twenty islands, of which five are inhabited.  The group extends forty-five miles from north to south, and is located between 13 deg. and 21 deg. north latitude, and between 144 deg. and 146 deg. east longitude.  The principal islands are Guam, Rota and Linian.  They were discovered by Magellan in 1521, and have belonged to Spain ever since.  Their population is 11,000.  The soil is fertile and densely wooded.  The climate is temperate.

Guam, the southernly and principal island, is 100 miles in circumference, and has a population of 8,100, of which 1,400 are Europeans.  Its central part is mountainous, and it has a small volcano.  The products are guacas, bananas, cocoa, oranges and limes.  The natives are noted as builders of the most rapidly sailing canoes in the world.

With Guam as a part of the territory of the United States, we have a direct line of possessions across the Pacific, in the order of Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines; while in a northwesterly direction from our Pacific coast we have the islands forming a part of Alaska.  By holding all these islands we will be prepared to control practically the commerce of the Pacific, the future great commercial highway of the world.

CHAPTER XXVII

The Official Title to Our New Possessions in the Indies.

Full Text of the Treaty of Peace with Spain Handed the President of the United States as a Christmas Gift for the People, at the White House, 1898—­The Gathered Fruit of a Glorious and Wonderful Victory.

On an August midnight the good ship Peru, Major-General Otis with his staff and General Hughes, and a thousand regular cavalry and “the historian of the Philippines” aboard, approached within a few miles, an immense mass of darkness.  About where the mouth of Manila Bay should be there was, deep in the east and at a considerable elevation, a spark of white, and in a few seconds a red light, keener than stars, and in half a minute there were the sharp flashes again, and we knew that there were friends watching and waiting—­that “our flag was still there,” that Admiral Dewey and General Merritt of the Navy and Army of the United States had upheld the symbol of the sovereignty of the Great Republic of North America, that the lights glowed down from the massive rock of Corregidor, that through the shadows that fell on these darksome waters the American squadron had entered into immortality less than four months before, and that with the morning light we should look upon the famous scene of triumphant Americanism.  We had been fifteen days out of the world, for there were only the southern constellations to tell us, the southern cross so high and the north star so low, and the dazzling scorpion with diamond claws touching the central blue dome, to say how far down into the tropics we were, while the clouds of flame rested on the serenities of the matchless sea;