286 AUSTRALASIA. 



Much veneration is shown for the dead and for those animals, such as lizards and 

 eels, into whose bodies they are supposed to have migrated. The Polynesians of 

 Nukunor and Satoan are the only natives who have carved wooden idols before 

 which they prostrate themselves in solemn adoration. But the religious rites vary 

 greatly in the different islands, and in respect of customs and institutions the 

 Caroline tribes are broken into endless fragments. Even some of the smaller 

 islands are divided into " several kingdoms " incessantly at war, or else maintaining 

 an " armed peace." Most of the chiefs succeed by hereditary right, while others 

 are elected by their peers. They are usually regarded as owners of the common 

 territory, and most of the produce is their property. 



Although since European skij^pers have monoj)olised the trade of the Pacific 

 islands, they have ceased to make distant voyages in their famous outriggers, the 

 natives of the Carolines are still daring navigators, for whom the deep has no 

 terrors. Their pilots are able to navigate the high seas guided only by the stars 

 and the direction of the waves. Formerly they maintained schools of navigation 

 and astronomy, where the young of both sexes were taught the relative position of 

 the constellations, the hours of the rise, azimuth, and setting of the stars, the 

 revolutions of the planets, the course of winds and currents, the divisions of the 

 circle, the direction of remote archipelagoes from the Philippines in the west to 

 Hawaii in the east. The horizon was divided into twelve, and even twenty-eight 

 and thirty-two arcs of a circle, and in some atolls there were special names for 

 thirty-three stars or stellar groups by which they were guided on the boundless 

 ocean. They visited the Marianas, over 250 miles distant, without any intermediate 

 station and even against cross currents. The pilots of the Caroline and Marshall 

 groups possess the so-called medos, a sort of chart ingeniously constructed with 

 shells or pebbles to represent islands, and bits of stick for the equator, the meridian, 

 the route to follow, the degrees or periods of navigation and the cross currents. 

 They understand the compass almost at a glance, and soon learn to make long 

 voyages by the magnetic needle. 



Ycq) {Uap, G nap), the large island lying nearest to the Philippines, is the most 

 Europeanised in the archipelago. The centre of government for the Western 

 Carolines and Pelew group is stationed at Tamil, near the chief roadstead ; here 

 also are settled the foreign traders, mostly Germans, who export copra and 

 bèche-de-mer. The natives, formerly much given to trade, have lost nearly all 

 their traffic, and profit little by the movement of exchanges. For currency they 

 still use shells and other objects pierced with holes and strung together, like the 

 Chinese coins. 



Ponapé, largest and formerly most populous of the Carolines, is likely to 

 acquire great importance as a re-victualling station for shipping ; several ports 

 accessible through passages piercing the reefs are sheltered by the encircling 

 barrier, and the foreign traders have already extensive plantations on the island. 

 On the coralline cliffs near the east side are seen the remains of prehistoric struc- 

 tures consisting of thick walls which are built of huge basalt columns placed 

 horizontally, and measuring from 26 to 36 feet in length. The natives have no tradi- 



