The taking of Guam during the war with Spain was one of the comedies of that disagreement. When its rickety fort was fired upon by one of our ships, the Spanish governor hastened down to the shore to greet the American officers, and apologized because he was out of powder and could not reply to what he supposed was a salute. Off in that corner of the world he had not heard of any war.

With the cession of this largest of the Ladrone islands we fall heir to some race problems as baffling as those presented by our Indians. The natives of this group belong to the Tarapons, and the traditions of these people say that they came in part from the east and partly from the west. It has been thought that they have a slight mixture of Mongolian blood, and this is not unlikely, for Chinese and Japanese junks have at various times been blown over sea to farther shores than these. History for this group begins with Magellan, who named it for the ladrones or thieves, who annexed his belongings when he arrived on the first voyage that had ever been made around the world. That they had crafts and arts is proved by their weapons, canoes, cloth, and armor, and they have left here some remarkable stone columns, more than twice the height of a man, with hemispheres of rock on their tops, flat sides uppermost, and six feet wide. In Tinian, Kusaie, and also in Ponape, in the Carolines, there are ruins, including, in the latter island, a court three hundred feet long with walls ten yards high, some of the monoliths being twenty-five feet long and eight feet thick. On Tongataboo are larger rocks, forty feet high, which were quarried elsewhere and shipped to that coral island. On Easter Island are platforms a hundred yards long, ten wide and ten high, with great statues all cut from stone. None of these remains, nor the picture-writing found near the statues, throw light on the history, purpose, or personality of their builders. Every family has its little circle of shells and stones which is a shrine where the gods are worshipped, and most of the gods are spirits of the great and wise who died long ago. Offerings to these took the form of food and of anointing for their altars, but human sacrifices were no doubt demanded at times, when the priests had been specially venturesome in asking favors. When a man died his soul sprang out, went below the earth, and found felicity in the west. This belief resembles the Indian faith in the happy hunting-ground, and incidentally it points the course of empire. The spirit could return once in a while, and ghostly visitations were sorely dreaded. The institution of the taboo was and is connected with the native religions of the Pacific islands. We have adopted the word and use it in its true meaning of forbidden. If an article were dedicated to a god, or used in his worship, or had been touched by him, or claimed by a chief or a priest, no commoner dared lay finger on it, for it was as sacred as the ark of the covenant. Some canny planters kept boys out of their orchards and palm groves by offering the fruit to certain gods until it was ripe, for a sign of taboo kept out all marauders till the crop was ready for gathering, when the owner changed his mind and claimed it himself. To break a taboo was not only to incur the wrath of the priests, but of the gods to whom the gift was offered, and who would surely reward the blasphemer for his sin by illness, accident, loss, or death.

As soon as the Spaniards had occupied the Ladrones—afterward named the Marianas, in honor of Maria Anna, queen of Philip IV. of Spain—they proceeded to slaughter the natives. In seventy years they had slain with sword, rack, toil, grief, and new diseases about fifty thousand people, reducing the populace to eighteen hundred. Of this aboriginal race, the Chamorros, nearly all have perished. In their original estate these were the most advanced of the Pacific islanders; they had more arts, more refinement, more kindliness, and more morality than the others. Under an age of oppression and abuse they naturally deteriorated, and have cared little to advantage themselves by the few schools and chapels that the Spaniards established in Guam and thereabout. It may be that the Chamorros shared with the people of the Carolines in the suffering caused by the great irruption of savages from the south under Icho-Kalakal. These warriors, in their wooden navies, destroyed the great tombs and temples because they had been raised to other gods than their own, slew the defenders of the temples, and broke up the old civilization, passing from island to island, and continuing their waste and murder. It was a raid of Goths and Vandals, and the effect of it was lasting. In Ponape it is said that the great structures they overthrew are haunted, and people thereabout will not eat a certain fresh-water fish of a blue color, because the king, Chauteleur, flying before Icho-Kalakal, fell into Chapalap River and was changed by the gods into one of these fish.