62 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA 
throughout the North Pacific, and the windward shores of the Hawaiian 
Islands are literally lined with it, as well as with redwood logs of formidable 
size, 
Small parties of male Japanese have repeatedly reached the American 
continent by sea, cast upon its shores after floating helplessly for months. 
Until recently, the survivors must have remained permanently near where 
they landed, and naturally uniting with women of the native races, have left 
descendents more or less impressed with their physical peculiarities. Such a 
slow, limited, but constant infusion of Japanese blood, almost entirely from 
male seamen, was undoubtedly sufficient to modify the original stock of all 
coast tribes along our north-western shore. No marks exist of any immigra- 
tion en masse, neither is there any present record of any Japanese woman 
saved from such a wreck, although cases may formerly have occurred, but 
must have been very rare. These unfortunate seamen, often illiterate, and 
separated from their sources of learning, necessarily lost their own language; 
but in doing so, doubtless contributed many isolated words to the Indian 
dialects of this coast. Many shipwrecked Japanese have informed me that 
they were enabled to communicate with and understand the natives of Atka 
and Adakh Islands. Quite an infusion of Japanese words is found among 
some of the coast tribes of Oregon and California, either pure, as tsche-tsche, 
milk, or clipped, as hiaku, speed, found reduced to hyack, meaning fast, in 
Indian; or yaku, evil genius in Japanese, similarly reduced to yak, devil, by 
the Indians. In almost all words showing such similarity, the Indian word is 
always an abbreviated word, or shorter word than the Japanese, from which 
it may be argued that the latter was the original and the former derived. The 
construction of the two languages is, however, different. There are, however, 
a large number of pure Japanese words and some very peculiar Japanese 
‘‘idioms, constructions, honorific, separative, and agglutinative particles ”’ 
found nearly identical in the American-Indian dialect. Shipwrecked Japan- 
ese are invariably enabled to communicate understandingly with the coast 
Indians, although speaking quite a different language. The great mass of 
the Japanese people stoutly disclaim any common descent with the Chinese, 
and firmly believe they have a wholly different origin. Any common ancestor 
must certainly have been in very remote ages. 
Professor George Davidson, in charge of the United States Coast Survey 
on the Pacific, our highest authority upon questions connected with the 
great ocean currents of this ocean, has bestowed much critical study upon 
the physical conditions connected with the Kuro Shiwo. In 1851, when sta- 
tioned at the mouth of the Columbia river, he began the interesting investi- 
gations necessary to demonstrate its complete outline. 
In 1868, he communicated to the National Academy of Science his deduc- 
tions establishing the existence of the return current northwestward, westward 
and southwestward along the shores of the Gulf of Alaska, and the southern 
coast of the Aleutian Islands, whilst the great body of the current is deflected 
down the northward coast until it is drawn into the Great Equatorial Current 
which moves westward until it strikes the Asiatic barrier, and thence starts 
on its course, about the island of Formosa, as the great warm stream of Japan. 
He first showed the striking analogy between this stream and that of the 
