Canton Island

These prophetic words appear under a picture of Canton Island in a 17 -year-old issue of the NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE. The photograph helps illustrate an article about what was then a lonely, barren speck of land.

To observe an eclipse of the sun, American and British astronomers had set up camps on Canton in 1937. In the course of their appointment with darkness they enlightened the world about the little isle, 1,909 watery miles southwest of Honolulu.

The scientists found no humans on Canton. The only living things were sea birds, turtles, hermit crabs, rats, and lizards among sparse, scrubby vegetation; a few coconut palms towered above the coral. Temperatures were high, rainfall was low, and the island lacked fresh water.

There was nothing inviting about this mid-Pacific atoll, but in a fast-developing Air Age it offered possibilities obvious to the star-gazing visitors of 1937. "Canton Island," wrote a member of the American party, "promises to be an important commercial airplane base in the South Pacific."

Pan American World Airways has seen to it that the promise was kept. Two years later the company established a seaplane base in the reef-circled lagoon of Canton Island. It serviced flying boats operating between the United States and Australasia.

Then, after World War II, Pan American switched to landplanes, using Canton's military airfield. Today, three airlines under different flags regularly stop at Canton's airport, and the seadrome can still be used by flying boats.

Lights along the 6,000-foot runway guided our 47-passenger Stratocruiser in to a smooth landing the night I arrived on Canton Island to see how it had changed over the years since the eclipse expedition.

A well-appointed hotel managed by Pan American stands where astronomers once pitched their tents. I moved into one of its rooms overlooking the lagoon. A breeze in the palms near the beach sounded like gentle rain on the roof. A sea bird called in the darkness. To the drone of an electric fan I fell into wanted sleep after the long flight from Honolulu.

Canton, a coral atoll 198 miles south of the Equator, is built on the rim of an ancient volcanic crater about 30 miles around. Ranging in width from 100 to 700 yards, the belt of land girdles a body of turquoise water abounding in fantastic fish and fascinating coral formations. The island's highest point rises 20 unimpressive feet above sea level.

On a map the atoll looks like a hollow pork chop. But from the air Canton resembles a gem. Its exquisitely colored lagoon is bordered by pearly coral. The island is a particularly welcome sight to pilots; no alternate landing ground lies within hundreds of miles of this little strip of reef in a vast expanse of ocean.

Some 280 persons form Canton's two communities-Northside and Southside. These settled sections receive their names from locations north and south of a ship channel that provides the main entrance into the lagoon from the sea. The tide rushes through this cut in the atoll's western flank like a swift river in spate. Vessels up to 400 feet long can navigate the passage to berth at a dock in the dredged harbor.

I found Northside more of a town than Southside, which is largely residential…"