as fast as the new vessels are added.  These facts carry their own argument.  One of the new ships may in fighting strength be equal to two of the old, but it can not do the cruising duty of two.  It is important, therefore, that we should have a more rapid increase in the number of serviceable ships.  I concur in the recommendation of the Secretary that the construction of 8 armored ships, 3 gunboats, and 5 torpedo boats be authorized.

An appalling calamity befell three of our naval vessels on duty at the Samoan Islands, in the harbor of Apia, in March last, involving the loss of 4 officers and 47 seamen, of two vessels, the Trenton and the Vandalia, and the disabling of a third, the Nipsic.  Three vessels of the German navy, also in the harbor, shared with our ships the force of the hurricane and suffered even more heavily.  While mourning the brave officers and men who died facing with high resolve perils greater than those of battle, it is most gratifying to state that the credit of the American Navy for seamanship, courage, and generosity was magnificently sustained in the storm-beaten harbor of Apia.

The report of the Secretary of the Interior exhibits the transactions of the Government with the Indian tribes.  Substantial progress has been made in the education of the children of school age and in the allotment of lands to adult Indians.  It is to be regretted that the policy of breaking up the tribal relation and of dealing with the Indian as an individual did not appear earlier in our legislation.  Large reservations held in common and the maintenance of the authority of the chiefs and headmen have deprived the individual of every incentive to the exercise of thrift, and the annuity has contributed an affirmative impulse toward a state of confirmed pauperism.

Our treaty stipulations should be observed with fidelity and our legislation should be highly considerate of the best interests of an ignorant and helpless people.  The reservations are now generally surrounded by white settlements.  We can no longer push the Indian back into the wilderness, and it remains only by every suitable agency to push him upward into the estate of a self-supporting and responsible citizen.  For the adult the first step is to locate him upon a farm, and for the child to place him in a school.

School attendance should be promoted by every moral agency, and those failing should be compelled.  The national schools for Indians have been very successful and should be multiplied, and as far as possible should be so organized and conducted as to facilitate the transfer of the schools to the States or Territories in which they are located when the Indians in a neighborhood have accepted citizenship and have become otherwise fitted for such a transfer.  This condition of things will be attained slowly, but it will be hastened by keeping it in mind; and in the meantime that cooperation between the Government and the mission schools which has wrought much good should be cordially and impartially maintained.