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Show Forgotten Isles Are United States Wards Cruise the fabled Caribbean this summer and try to find them, lost amid the swells of a breeze-tossed sea. Few know their names. Still fewer remember their history. Yet more than a dozen islands, islets, and banks in the Caribbean are possessions of the United States along with such major holdings as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Is-lands. Most of the tiny, largely uninhabited unin-habited wards with storybook names of Swan, Navassa, Serrana. Quita Sueno, Roncador Cay and Corn came under U. S. control through the 19th century search for a valuable, natural fertilizer called guano. An act of Congress in 1856 authorized the United States to lay claim to any guano-rich guano-rich "island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other government." The law, however, did not eliminate elimi-nate a measure of international controversy over the smaller Caribbean dependencies. |