OCTOBEE 9, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



497 



purely "savage" condition, must have 

 drifted away from the rest of the human 

 race, and entered into the utter seclusion of 

 that largest of oceans, the Pacific, covering 

 as it does more than a third of the surface 

 of the globe, long before the first man of 

 civilized race, Balboa, in 1513, from the 

 Peak in Darien, set eyes on the edge of 

 what he called ' ' the Great South Sea, ' ' be- 

 fore Magellan, in 1520, forced his way into 

 and across that same sea, which he called 

 the Pacific, and certainly long before civil- 

 ized men settled on any part of the shore of 

 that ocean, i. e., in 1788, at the foundation 

 of Australia. For when first studied at 

 close quarters by civilized folk from Europe, 

 which was not till after the last-named 

 event, these South Sea "savages" had been 

 in seclusion during a period sufficiently 

 long — and certainly no short period would 

 have sufficed for such an effect — not only 

 for them all to have assumed characters, 

 cultural and even physical, sufficient to dis- 

 tinguish them from all other folk outside 

 the Pacific, but also for them to have split up 

 into many separate parties, probably some- 

 times of but few individuals, many of 

 which had drifted to some isolated island or 

 island-group, and had there in the course 

 of time taken on further well-marked sec- 

 ondary differences. 



It will probably now never be discovered 

 when, how often, and from what different 

 places the ancestors of these folk reached 

 the Pacific. It is quite possible that they 

 entered again and again, and were carried 

 by winds and currents, some from west to 

 east and some in the reverse direction, 

 many perishing in that waste of waters, 

 but some reaching land and finding shelter 

 on some of that great cloud of small islands 

 which lie scattered on both sides of the 

 equator and nearly across that otherwise 

 landless ocean. 



Of the folk who in those old times thus 



drifted about and across the Pacific, the 

 most important, for the part which they 

 played in the story which I am endeavoring 

 to tell, were the two hordes of "savages" 

 now known respectively as Melanesians and 

 Polynesians. "Without entering deeply into 

 the difficult subject of the earlier migra- 

 tions of these two hordes, it will suffice here 

 to note that, towards the end of the eigh- 

 teenth century, when European folk at last 

 began to frequent the South Sea Islands, 

 and when consequently something definite 

 began to be known in Europe about the 

 islanders, certain Melanesians, who had 

 probably long previously drifted down 

 from north-westward, were found to be, 

 and probably had long been, in occupation 

 of the exceptionally remote and isolated 

 Fiji Islands; also that, long after this 

 Melanesian occupation of these islands, and 

 only shortly before Europeans began to 

 frequent them, several bodies of Polyne- 

 sians, who had long been in occupation of 

 the Friendly or Tongan Islands, lying away 

 to the east of Fiji, had already forced or 

 were forcing their way into the Fijian Is- 

 lands. 



The meeting in Fiji of these two folk, 

 both still in a state of "savagery," but 

 the Polynesians much further advanced in 

 culture than the Melanesians, at a time be- 

 fore European influence had begun to 

 strengthen in those islands, affords an ex- 

 ceptionally good opportunity for the study 

 of successive stages in the development of 

 primitive character, especially as the two 

 sets of "savages" were not yet so closely 

 intermingled as to be indistinguishable — at 

 least in many parts of Fiji. It is unfor- 

 tunate that the earliest European visitors 

 to Fiji were not of the kind to observe and to 

 leave proper records of their observations. 



The earlier, Melanesian, occupants of 

 Fiji had to some extent given way, but by 

 no means readily and completely, to the 



