Godfrey Morgan | Page 3

away to China or Japan, run in a
more southerly direction. Sailing-vessels would meet with endless
calms in the Whirlpool of Fleurieu; and steamers, which always take
the shortest road, would gain no advantage by crossing it. Hence ships

of neither class know anything of Spencer Island, which rises above the
waters like the isolated summit of one of the submarine mountains of
the Pacific. Truly, for a man wishing to flee from the noise of the world,
seeking quiet in solitude, what could be better than this island, lost
within a few hundred miles of the coast? For a voluntary Robinson
Crusoe, it would be the very ideal of its kind! Only of course he must
pay for it.
And now, why did the United States desire to part with the island? Was
it for some whim? No! A great nation cannot act on caprice in any
matter, however simple. The truth was this: situated as it was, Spencer
Island had for a long time been known as a station perfectly useless.
There could be no practical result from settling there. In a military
point of view it was of no importance, for it only commanded an
absolutely deserted portion of the Pacific. In a commercial point of
view there was a similar want of importance, for the products would
not pay the freight either inwards or outwards. For a criminal colony it
was too far from the coast. And to occupy it in any way, would be a
very expensive undertaking. So it had remained deserted from time
immemorial, and Congress, composed of "eminently practical" men,
had resolved to put it up for sale--on one condition only, and that was,
that its purchaser should be a free American citizen. There was no
intention of giving away the island for nothing, and so the reserve price
had been fixed at $1,100,000. This amount for a financial society
dealing with such matters was a mere bagatelle, if the transaction could
offer any advantages; but as we need hardly repeat, it offered none, and
competent men attached no more value to this detached portion of the
United States, than to one of the islands lost beneath the glaciers of the
Pole.
In one sense, however, the amount was considerable. A man must be
rich to pay for this hobby, for in any case it would not return him a
halfpenny per cent. He would even have to be immensely rich for the
transaction was to be a "cash" one, and even in the United States it is as
yet rare to find citizens with $1,100,000 in their pockets, who would
care to throw them into the water without hope of return.

And Congress had decided not to sell the island under the price. Eleven
hundred thousand dollars, not a cent less, or Spencer Island would
remain the property of the Union.
It was hardly likely that any one would be mad enough to buy it on the
terms.
Besides, it was expressly reserved that the proprietor, if one offered,
should not become king of Spencer Island, but president of a republic.
He would gain no right to have subjects, but only fellow-citizens, who
could elect him for a fixed time, and would be free from re-electing
him indefinitely. Under any circumstances he was forbidden to play at
monarchy. The Union could never tolerate the foundation of a kingdom,
no matter how small, in American waters.
This reservation was enough to keep off many an ambitious millionaire,
many an aged nabob, who might like to compete with the kings of the
Sandwich, the Marquesas, and the other archipelagoes of the Pacific.
In short, for one reason or other, nobody presented himself. Time was
getting on, the crier was out of breath in his efforts to secure a buyer,
the auctioneer orated without obtaining a single specimen of those nods
which his estimable fraternity are so quick to discover; and the reserve
price was not even mentioned.
However, if the hammer was not wearied with oscillating above the
rostrum, the crowd was not wearied with waiting around it. The joking
continued to increase, and the chaff never ceased for a moment. One
individual offered two dollars for the island, costs included. Another
said that a man ought to be paid that for taking it.
And all the time the crier was heard with,--
"An island to sell! an island for sale!"
And there was no one to buy it.
"Will you guarantee that there are flats there?" said Stumpy, the grocer

of Merchant Street, alluding to the deposits so famous in alluvial
gold-mining.
"No," answered the auctioneer, "but it is not impossible that there are,
and the State abandons all its rights over the gold lands."
"Haven't you got a volcano?" asked Oakhurst, the bar-keeper of