CAROLINE ISLANDS. 



139 



ners of the people has been produced through 

 the disinterested labors of the missionaries. 

 The Spaniards in the Philippine and Ladrone 

 Islands have had some intercourse and trade 

 with the Pelews, Yap. and the other islands in 

 the western part of the archipelago. In Yap 

 a Spanish mission was established in 1856. 



Until the development of the trade in copra, 

 or dried cocoanut, there was little to attract 

 traders in the Caroline Islands. The oil of the 

 cocoanut is extensively used in soap-making. It 

 produces the only soap that can be used with 

 salt water. The oil is extracted in Europe and 

 the residuum is used to feed cattle. There is 

 also some trade in beche-de-mer, or trepang. Eu- 

 ropeans settled on Ponape, Yap, and some of 

 the other islands, do considerable business with 

 whalers. The principal European goods bar- 



bark-strips. "What is called money is aragon- 

 ite-stone in disks, weighing often two or three 

 tons. The stones are brought from a quarry in 

 the Pelew Islands. These stones are placed as 

 a sign of wealth around the mounds on which 

 the large houses, with mats for walls and roofs, 

 are built. The trepang-fisheries of Yap are ex- 

 hausted. The copra-trade, amounting to 550 

 tons, is in the hands of the English firm of 

 O'Keefe & Co., which has more than half of 

 the whole trade ; Capt. Holcombe, an Ameri- 

 can, associated with the Germans; and the Ger- 

 man houses of Hernsheim & Co., and the South 

 Sea Trading and Plantation Company. The 

 natives will drink no spirits, but are eager pur- 

 chasers of fire-arms and ammunition, as well as 

 of pipes and tobacco, axes, saws, and other 

 tools, fish-hooks, etc. They are very industri- 



tered with the islanders are hardware, tobacco, 

 spirits, and glass bottles. Pearl-shells are also 

 exported, and from the Pelew Islands consid- 

 erable quantities of tortoise-shell are obtained. 

 Yap, the westernmost of the Central Caroline 

 Islands, is the name of a group of small vol- 

 canic islands encircled by coral reefs. They lie 

 close together, and are usually spoken of as 

 though forming a single island. Unlike other 

 islands of the western Pacific, Yap is densely 

 populated, containing several tribes number- 

 ing together 12,000 individuals. The inhab- 

 itants retain traces of an earlier civilization. 

 They construct stone piers, and their canoes are 

 well designed and graceful, with carved orna- 

 ments at either end. There is an excellent har- 

 bor, called Tomil Bay, in the southeast. The 

 people are comparatively light in color, the 

 men tall and well formed, elaborately tattooed, 

 with their long hair tied in a knot ; the women 

 lighter of hue, with braided hair and a skirt of 



ous, and simple in their wants, but the numer- 

 ous chiefs are continually at war with one an- 

 other, and exert themselves to obtain the best 

 weapons. Their residences bristle with can- 

 nons, among them large Armstrong guns. 



The white residents on the islands of north- 

 ern Micronesia are of two classes, missionaries 

 and traders. The missionaries are sent out by 

 the American Board of Foreign Missions. The 

 principal islands of the Caroline group, besides 

 Yap, are Kusaie or Strong's Island, Ponape or 

 Ascension Island, with their dependent islets, 

 and Ruk or Hogolen, a collection of low and 

 high islands within an encircling reef. Traders 

 do not reside permanently on the latter group, 

 nor upon Ulea, Faralep, Nuguor, and other 

 small islets of the archipelago. The collective 

 export of all of them is perhaps 200 tons of co- 

 pra and a few tons of the inferior black-edged 

 pearl-shell. Kusaie and Ponape are high isl- 

 ands, consisting of masses of lofty hills. They 



