<h2> <SPAN name="information" id="information"></SPAN>INFORMATION WANTED </h2>
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<p> "WASHINGTON,
December 10, 1867.</p>
<p>"Could you give me any information respecting such islands, if any, as the
government is going to purchase?"</p>
<p>It is an uncle of mine that wants to know. He is an industrious man and
well disposed, and wants to make a living in an honest, humble way, but
more especially he wants to be quiet. He wishes to settle down, and be
quiet and unostentatious. He has been to the new island St. Thomas, but he
says he thinks things are unsettled there. He went there early with an
attache of the State Department, who was sent down with money to pay for
the island. My uncle had his money in the same box, and so when they went
ashore, getting a receipt, the sailors broke open the box and took all the
money, not making any distinction between government money, which was
legitimate money to be stolen, and my uncle's, which was his own private
property, and should have been respected. But he came home and got some
more and went back. And then he took the fever. There are seven kinds of
fever down there, you know; and, as his blood was out of order by reason
of loss of sleep and general wear and tear of mind, he failed to cure the
first fever, and then somehow he got the other six. He is not a kind of
man that enjoys fevers, though he is well meaning and always does what he
thinks is right, and so he was a good deal annoyed when it appeared he was
going to die.</p>
<p>But he worried through, and got well and started a farm. He fenced it in,
and the next day that great storm came on and washed the most of it over
to Gibraltar, or around there somewhere. He only said, in his patient way,
that it was gone, and he wouldn't bother about trying to find out where it
went to, though it was his opinion it went to Gibraltar.</p>
<p>Then he invested in a mountain, and started a farm up there, so as to be
out of the way when the sea came ashore again. It was a good mountain, and
a good farm, but it wasn't any use; an earthquake came the next night and
shook it all down. It was all fragments, you know, and so mixed up with
another man's property that he could not tell which were his fragments
without going to law; and he would not do that, because his main object in
going to St. Thomas was to be quiet. All that he wanted was to settle down
and be quiet.</p>
<p>He thought it all over, and finally he concluded to try the low ground
again, especially as he wanted to start a brickyard this time. He bought a
flat, and put out a hundred thousand bricks to dry preparatory to baking
them. But luck appeared to be against him. A volcano shoved itself through
there that night, and elevated his brickyard about two thousand feet in
the air. It irritated him a good deal. He has been up there, and he says
the bricks are all baked right enough, but he can't get them down. At
first, he thought maybe the government would get the bricks down for him,
because since government bought the island, it ought to protect the
property where a man has invested in good faith; but all he wants is
quiet, and so he is not going to apply for the subsidy he was thinking
about.</p>
<p>He went back there last week in a couple of ships of war, to prospect
around the coast for a safe place for a farm where he could be quiet; but
a great "tidal wave" came, and hoisted both of the ships out into one of
the interior counties, and he came near losing his life. So he has given
up prospecting in a ship, and is discouraged.</p>
<p>Well, now he don't know what to do. He has tried Alaska; but the bears
kept after him so much, and kept him so much on the jump, as it were, that
he had to leave the country. He could not be quiet there with those bears
prancing after him all the time. That is how he came to go to the new
island we have bought—St. Thomas. But he is getting to think St.
Thomas is not quiet enough for a man of his turn of mind, and that is why
he wishes me to find out if government is likely to buy some more islands
shortly. He has heard that government is thinking about buying Porto Rico.
If that is true, he wishes to try Porto Rico, if it is a quiet place. How
is Porto Rico for his style of man? Do you think the government will buy
it?</p>
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