GERMAN NAVAL BASE IN PACIFIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15767, 16 November 1914, Page 8

GERMAN NAVAL BASE IN PACIFIC.

GALLAPAGOS ISLANDS UNDER SUSPICION.

ALLIED PROTEST TO SOUTH AMERICAN STATES.

(Received. November 15. 7.30 p.m.)

Washington, November 14.

An Anglo-French Note has been presented, protesting against wireless installations in Ecuador and Columbia, assisting the Germans. It states that Gallapagos Islands arc serving as a naval base for the enemy. The Note has been presented to Washington instead of to Ecuador and Columbia because the allies are desirous of scrupulously respecting the spirit of the Monroe doctrine.

The Gallapagos Islands are a group in the Pacific Ocean on and near the equator, 730 miles west of the coast of Ecuador, in South America, to which State they belong. The group consists of five principal and eight small islands. On one of the islands there is a convict settlement with some 300 inhabitants living in low thatched or iron-roofed huts under the supervision of a police commissioner and other officials of Ecuador, by which country the group was annexed in 1832. A Governor of the islands has been appointed since 1885, some importance being foreseen for the islands in connection with the cutting of the Panama Canal, as the group lies on the route to Australia opened up by that scheme. The shores of the larger islands are fringed in some parts with a dense barrier of mangroves, backed by an often impenetrable thicket of tropical undergrowth.