ISLANDS of THE UNITED STATES.
Bristol, Ill.
Please give the number and dimensions of the islands of the United States, and state their condition as to soil, water, atmosphere, vegetation, etc.; also, whether they are generally inhabited.
C. S. Hopper.
Answer.—This is a very interesting question, or series of questions, but the full answer would fill a volume. The coast of the State of Michigan alone is gemmed with no fewer than 179 islands of all sizes, from Isle Royale, which forms an entire county of more than fifty miles in length by ten in breadth, to islets of less than an acre in surface. Their total area aggregates 404,730 acres. In “Rand & McNally’s Atlas of the World” all the islands of noticeable magnitude are laid down, and by this authority it appears that Maine has 40 such islands; Massachusetts, 39; Rhode Island, 24; Connecticut, 9; New York, 22; New Jersey, 2; Delaware, 6; Maryland, 16; Virginia, 7; North Carolina, 10; South Carolina, 10; Georgia, 11; Florida, 79; Alabama, 4; Mississippi, 7: Louisiana, 24; Texas, 8; Ohio, 13; Michigan, 179; Wisconsin, 31, California, 14; Washington Territory, 26. Alaska Territory embraces more than 200 islands, many of which are of great value as fishing stations. There are hundreds of petty islets not located except in the charts of the United States Coast Survey. Many of them, like the islands in the Western rivers, are not known by names but only by numbers. But a small number of the more important islands in the above list are inhabited; less than 100 in all. The soil is of all varieties, from the fertile fields of Port Royal, Hilton Head, and Edisto, South Carolina, the home of the famous “sea island cotton,” and the rich dark loam of Long Island, New York, to the bleak rocks and barren sands of Mt. Desert, and the arid isles on the coast of California.
PRE-EMPTION CLAIM QUERIES.
St. Lawrence, Dak.
1. What is necessary to constitute “continuous residence” on a pre-emption claim? 2. What more does the law require of a single man to “prove up” than of the head or a family?
Subscriber.