4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



between the peoples of the Mackenzie and the Lena delta, and it is 

 not improbable that the carrying band of the Ainu in Yeso and a 

 similar device depicted on ancient codices and stone monuments in 

 Mexico may have had a common origin. Advancing to a time when 

 man acquired the art of recording his thoughts, the question of any- 

 contact between the peoples of the eastern and western shores of the 

 Pacific, south of latitude 40°, compels us to examine the avenues 

 which have been so potent in the distribution of life in the past — 

 namely, the oceanic currents. We are at once led to the great Japan 

 current, the Kuro Shiwo, which sweeps up by the coast of Japan 

 and spends its force on the northwest coast of America. Records 

 show a number of instances of Japanese junks cast ashore on the 

 Oregon coast and shores to the north.* 



It must be evidences of Japanese and not Chinese contact that 

 we are to look for — tangible evidences, for example, in the form of 

 relics, methods of burial, etc. That the Japanese bear resemblances 

 to certain northern people there can be no doubt. Dr. Torell 

 brought before the Swedish Anthropological Society, some years ago, 

 the results of a comparative study of Eskimo and Japanese. The 

 anatomical and ethnographical resemblances appeared so striking to 

 him as to give additional strength to the theory of the settlement of 

 America from Asia by way of Bering Strait. That there are cer- 

 tain resemblances among individuals of different races we have 

 abundant evidences. At a reception in Philadelphia I introduced a 

 Japanese commissioner (who had been a Cambridge wrangler) to a 

 full-blooded Omaha Indian dressed in our costume, and the com- 

 missioner began a conversation with him in Japanese; nor could he 

 believe me when I assured him that it was an Indian that he was 

 addressing, and not one of his own countrymen. I was told by an 

 attache of the Japanese legation at Washington that after carefully 

 scrutinizing the features of a gentleman with whom he was travel- 

 ing he ventured to introduce himself as a fellow-countryman, and 

 found to his astonishment that the man was a native of the Malay 

 Peninsula. That the Malays bear a strong resemblance to the 

 Chinese is quite true. Dr. Baelz, of the Medical College of Japan, 

 can find no differences between the crania and pelves of the Chinese 

 and Malays. Wallace assures us that even the Malay of Java, when 



* Mr. Charles Walcott Brooks presented to the California Academy of Sciences a report 

 of Japanese vessels wrecked on the North Pacific Ocean in which many instances are given. 

 He says : " Every junk found stranded on the coast of North America or on the Hawaiian 

 or adjacent islands has, on examination, proved to be Japanese, and no single instance of a 

 Chinese vessel has ever been reported, nor is any believed to have existed. . . . There also 

 exists an ocean stream of cold water emerging from the Arctic Ocean which sets close in 

 along the eastern coast of Asia. This fully accounts for the absence of Chinese junks on 

 the Pacific, as vessels disabled off their coast would naturally drift southward." 



