THE ISLE 0E FORTUNE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5805, 24 February 1897, Page 4

THE ISLE 0E FORTUNE.

[By Frank G. Carf enter. j (Detroit Free Press.) The Isle of Millionaires ! Have you ever heard of it ? It is a lone retreat for the .Robinson Crusoes of Wall Street and Fifth Avenue. .A fairyland belonging to a club whose members have men Fridays by the dozen and who live in palaces rather than huts. I visited it, during a recent trip to the south. It lies just about eight miles from Brunswick, Ga., surrounded by the warm salt' waters of the southern Atlantic. It belongs in common to about five score, millionaires. It is estimated that the aggregate fortunes of its owners . foot up several times 100,000,000d01, and it ,is said that every man who loafs within its club house spends his tens of thousands of dollars a year. It is known as Jekyl Island, and it - was bought as a millionaires' resort. .The membership fee at ,the start was 600dol, but I am told that' admission to the club is., now worth . thou-" sands. The island cost the club . 125,000dol ; when it was only a stretch of sand, marsh and forests. Since then hundreds of thou- 1 sands of dollars have been expended upon it, and when I visited it I found an army of workmen putting up , new buildings, transplanting palm trees and making other EXTENSIVE IMPROVEMENTS' TOR THE WINTER SEASON. No one can land on Jekyl Island' unless he. has an invitation. Steamboats cannot stop there, and the millionaires are as safe from intrusion as they are behind their English butlers in their homes in the great cities. The privacy of the rich surrounds them and the golden key of .blue • blood 1 allied to wealth is required before membership to the club can be obtained. . So far little has been said about the club in the newspapers. Before I take you with me on a visit to the island, let me say a little more about ,the members of the club. A list of them lies before me, and I see that they . come from all parts of the Union. There is Marshal Field, the big merchant prince of Chicago, who began life as a farmer's boy, but who now does a business of something like 20,000,000d0l a year. He has made .a fortune in dry goods, real estate and mines, and HIS INCOME IS ENORMOUS. ; He travels to Brunswick in a special car, and crosses in the club launch to the •island. Then there is James Hill, of St Paul, who back in the sixties was a clerk, and who now has more railroads than any other man in the country. He owns the Great Northern, has a large share of « the Northern Pacific, and such other property that his pile is measured by the tens of millions. He comes to Jekyl to try to get rest, and shoots and hunts in this warm climate when the thermometer is at zero in his Minnesota home. Another railroad millionaire who has a membership in the club is George Gould, and a third man whose special car carries him there is Calvin S. Brice, the capitalist and United States senator. Pierre Lorillard, the rich tobacconist, spends some time at Jekyl, and Cornelius N. Bliss, who is now spoken of as a possible Secretary of the Treasury in M'Kinley's cabinet, is another rich member. . A large number of the members are rich by inheritance. Some are polite loafers, who do little more than try to kill time, and a chapter might be written on the KICH WOMEN WHO COME TO JEKYL to while away the weary hours. The younger girls . come to flirt and get husbands, for the matches made here are sure to be good from a financial standpoint at least. They bring their poodles with them, and I was shown a photograph of the thousand-dollar dog which was owned by v the girl whom Frederick Vanderbilt courted at Jekyl and came so near marrying. The dog sits on a plush cushion, and I am told it wore a gold collar. Then there are the Goelets, the Rockfellers, the Cuttings and a score of other well-known names which are almost regularly registered on the Jekyl Island club book. There are millionaires from Cincinnati and other great cities, and, in fact, a representative of most of the great fortunes of the United States may be found in the club. Jekyl is a fairy island, where it is almost always summer. Heated as it is by the amorous kisses of the voluptuous Gulf Stream, the air is always balmy, and the trees are always green. It is just opposite Brunswick, Ga., one of the great turpentine and resin markets of the country, and the sweet smell of the long-leaved pines is mixed with that of the tropical plants of the south and the salt air of the sea. Jekyl does . not lie alone on the waters. Within a few miles of it are many beautiful islands. THE FAMED SEA ISLANDS which embroider the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, and which are noted for raising the finest cotton of the world. It is now winter here in the north, but December in Jekyl is like June in Dakota. The flowers are in bloom and Nature has on its seven-leagued boots of luxuriant life. The surroundings are those of perpetual spring. The air is such that it opens the soul of the most ascetic. It was here that the pious Charles Wesley fell in love, and here',John Wesley came to straighten out his brother's trouble. Hero John Wesley preached some of his great sermons, and it was on one arm of this island that Charles Wesley stood when he composed the well-known hymn, the first verse of which is : "■Lo on a narrow neck of land 'Twixt two unbounded seas I stand, Yet bow insensible A point of time, a moment's space, Jieinoves me to yon heavenly place, Or stuts mo up in hell." Everywhere we went we saw traces of game, and we learned that we were in one of the best game preserves of the United States. Jekyl island is eleven miles long and about two miles wide. It contains 14,000 acres, and this is of such a character that it is adapted to all kinds of game. Thirty-fivo hundred acres of it are of salt • marsh. Twenty-five hundred acres are of heavy oak and pine forest. Twenty-five hundred acres are of old Sea Island cotton land, and four thousand five hundred acres are of hemmock and dry savanna land. The result is that all kinds of game will thrive. The forests are full of deer and wild hogs. In the gamekeepers' lodge I saw specimens of the game which had been shot, and they embraced many kinds of animals and birds. The deer are found here naturally, but many of the birds are imported. The gamekeeper said, "We get thousands of quail every year ! and let them loose. Our members want to shoot quail, but they do not thrive well here, so we have to import them. We let out from eight hundred to a thousand at a time, and it is not uncommon for a dog to chase up five hundred out of a single cover. We have so many deer here that we have to put a net around the club-house grounds to keep them away from the house. You may see a score of them walking about near the houses almost any moonlight night, and it is no trouble to shoot them." I spent some time in looking at the buildings on Jekyl island. The cottages are not very extravagant — that is, they are not extravagant as rich men's homes. They are rather extravagant as cottages, for they cost all the way from 15,000d01s to 60,000 dols each. There is one 50,000d01s house that has never been occupied. The millionaire who ordered it built thought he might want it some time, but so far has not come to see it. The club house itself cost, I am told, about lOO.OOOdoIs. It is a big three-storey brick building with a tower at one end, and with an immense circular porch running around it. It is heated by steam, and it is now being lighted by electricity. I went through the new apartment house which is now being built. There are about 200 carpenters and masons at work upon it, and it will have, I judge, about a dozen apartments. Everything is, of course, of the most luxurious nature, and money is of no object when there is any question of comfort under consideration. I could write a column about THE BEAUTIES OF THE GBOUNDS. I could tell you how boats were employed to carry tall palm trees from other parts