288 AUSTEALASIA. 



IV. — Eastern Micronesia : Marshall, Gilbert, and Ellice Archipelagoes. 



These groups, which stretch east of the Carolines about 2,500 miles trans- 

 versely to the equator, all belong to the same geological formation, and are all 

 disposed in the same direction. From the geographical standpoint they should be 

 studied together, although inhabited by different ethnical populations. The Ellice 

 and part of the Gilbert Islands are in this respect Polynesian lands, while the 

 more important Marshall group belongs to Micronesia. 



Politically also they form different areas, being already distributed officially 

 amongst two European powers. The Marshalls, whose trade is monopolised by 

 Hamburg merchants, form part of the German colonial empire, whereas in 1886 

 the Gilbert and Ellice Archipelagoes were declared to lie within the sphere of 

 British interests. But were priority of discovery to confer any right of possession, 

 all should certainly be assigned to Spain. The San Bartolomeo sighted by Loyasa 

 in 1525 was probably one of the Marshalls ; but in any case the " Jardines," so 

 named by Alvaro de Saavedra in 1529, certainly belonged to this group, as did 

 also the Pescadores visited by other navigators during the sixteenth century. In 

 1567 Mendana de Neyra also sailed through the southern Ellice group. None of 

 these islands, however, were exactly determined before the systematic exploration 

 of the Pacific two centuries later. 



In 1767 Wallis first surveyed two members of the Pescadores ; then Marshall 

 and Gilbert, returning from Port Jackson in 1788, traversed these regions of 

 Eastern Micronesia, and studied in detail the position and form of the groups 

 henceforth known by their names. Other designations, however, have also been 

 given them, and the Gilbert, for instance, have been called the Kingsmill and the 

 Line Islands. Marshall and Gilbert were followed by other English navigators, 

 and then at the close of the Napoleonic wars Kotzebue and Chamisso made their 

 memorable expedition through the Micronesian atolls on board the Russian vessel, 

 the liurik. In 1823 Duperrey also visited two important members of the Marshall 

 group, and since then interesting memoirs have been published by traders and 

 missionaries long resident in various parts of these archipelagoes, whose collective 

 area may now be estimated at about 350 square miles, with a total population of 

 fifty-five thousand. 



Nearly all the islands in the three archipelagoes, which rest on a common 

 marine bed less than 900 fathoms deep, are disposed in the direction from north- 

 west to south-east. A moderate upheaval of this bed would unite them all with 

 the Samoan Archipelago in a long narrow stretch of dry land. With the excep- 

 tion of three or four islands probably upheaved by igneous action, all the Marshall, 

 Gilbert, and Ellice groups are of low coralline formation, rising little more than 

 five or six feet above sea-level, except where shifting dunes have been formed by 

 the winds. 



Some of these coral islands have been united by the marine alluvia in conti- 

 nuous lands without break or lagoons. But most of them are atolls with an outer 

 circuit of islets and reefs, and a central lagoon offering shelter to boats, and some- 



