NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN. 19 



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, e^fil 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 dift'erent 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 



