Approaches to the Pacific Coast 

 "Ross" or Russian fort upon the banks of a Russian 

 River in California. 



Indeed, the reflective student can never lose 

 sight of the fact that Asia has alwaj^s tended to 

 overflow eastward. Migrations remote in time have 

 stamped their impress upon the native population 

 of the American side of the ocean, and it may 

 even be to this source that the American Indian 

 owes his origin. Again, whether or not the land 

 of Fusang is to be identified with Mexico, this in- 

 terpretation of the Chinese story of Hiu Shen has 

 at least a suggestive interest in the history of the 

 Pacific. Hiu Shen was a Buddhist missionary from 

 Cabul who appeared in 499 A. D. at King-Chow 

 on the Yang-Tse. To the emperor Wu Ti he brought 

 presents from Fusang — thought to be the land of 

 the agave or century-plant — and the record of his 

 voj^age was incorporated in the imperial annals. 

 It is, indeed, no more than might have been ex- 

 pected that the extraordinary zeal of the Buddhist 

 missionaries should have brought them in the fifth 

 century to America; and while linguistic scholars 

 continue to disagree, others may, for the time, ac- 

 cept the story as an additional illustration of the 

 fact that waves caused by upheavals in the life of 

 Asia break ultimately upon the American shore. 

 So, too, the advance of the Russians across north- 

 ern Asia in the sixteenth century reached Alaska, 

 through the discoveries of Vitus Bering, by the 

 middle of the eighteenth; and it is of interest to 

 observe that there were moments in the opening 

 years of the nineteenth century when it seemed as 

 if the Pacific was about to become a Russian sea. 

 Later still, the inauguration of steamship communi- 

 cation across the Pacific Ocean showed how easily 

 the Chinese overflow might set towards the Cali- 

 fornia coast, while today an immigration problem 

 presents itself that acts of Congress may prove 

 inadequate to solve. 



The North Atlantic shores of America are dom- 

 inated by European civilization. Granted the dis- 

 covery of eastern North America, the way there 

 from Europe lay open for all who cared to take 

 it. The interest of Atlantic Coast history lies in 

 the vicissitudes of the settlers in their struggle with 

 nature, and in the varying relations they have main- 

 tained with sovereign powers in Europe that could 

 not be brought to take the settlers' view of the 

 problems of a new land. 



The interest of Pacific Coast history is alto- 

 gether different. Far from being easily accessible 

 to Europe, California was, in the first instance, 



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