Problems of the Pacific 



337 



richness, promising of future wealth 

 when men learn to convert the seas into 

 pastures and preserves for living things 

 useful to their kind. 



Herein lies one of the greatest and 

 most enticing of the problems of the 

 Pacific: How are the watery wastes and 

 the abounding vitality of the great ocean 

 to be reconstructed and rendered avail- 

 able for human benefit ? When an in- 

 ternational tribunal discussed the seal 

 question a few years ago, two of our as- 

 sociates — General John W. Foster and 

 Mr J. Stanley - Brown — were almost 

 alone in grasping the idea that open 

 ocean will some day be brought under 

 human subjection as feeding grounds 

 for useful organisms, just as are the 

 narrower fields and pastures on land; 

 3 - et the concept is growing, and the 

 problem of ways and means is destined 

 to become a burning one in the early 

 future. 



THE PREHISTORIC PACIFIC 



It is a convenient custom to apply the 

 term ' ' prehistoric ' ' to that earlier part 

 of the human era — the Psychozoic age 

 of Le Conte — stretching from the advent 

 of man, either in particular provinces or 

 on the entire globe, up to the stage at 

 which writing arose and records began. 

 This was the prescriptorial stage of 

 human development, and the period, 

 with its remains and relics of early 

 humanity, forms the major part of the 

 domain of archeology. Now, the arche- 

 ology of the Pacific is a nearly untrod- 

 den field, and teems with problems of 

 most attractive character. Thus the 

 home of what would appear to be the 

 earliest known human prototype has 

 been found in modern Java, on the bor- 

 ders of the great ocean, in Tertiary 

 deposits attesting profound geographic 

 changes since the scattered bones were 

 entombed. Thus, again, the uttermost 

 island of the Oceanian archipelago, Te 

 Pito Te Henua, or Easter Island, 



abounds in most impressive monolithic 

 sculptures of a size so gigantic as to re- 

 call the Titanic relics of Yucatan and 

 Peru, Egypt, and India, yet whose ori- 

 gin and age are wholly lost in the ob- 

 scurity of the unrecorded past; and, 

 similarly, various other Pacific islands 

 contain relics or ruins attesting a former 

 population of which no known tradition 

 survives among the living inhabitants. 

 No doubt the greater part of these relics 

 await discovery, while the story of all 

 remains to be wrought out as our knowl- 

 edge of the islands and shorelands ad- 

 vances. So well informed a student as 

 Archibald Colquhoun suggests that 

 Easter Island must have been originally 

 peopled from South America, and it is 

 simple and easy to so extend the sug- 

 gestion as to explain similarly the peo- 

 pling of the more westerly islands by a 

 stock of navigators skilled in rock carv- 

 ing. True, the distances are so great 

 and other difficulties so numerous as to 

 render the suggestion of little weight in 

 the absence of direct archeologic evi- 

 dence; yet it is worth remembering that 

 the supposition is in line with the sug- 

 gestion of Professor Cook that the palm 

 and other tropical plants were car- 

 ried westward by human agency after 

 their character was shaped by cultiva- 

 tion on the American hemisphere. It 

 was an early view that America was 

 peopled from Asia by way of Bering 

 Strait. This may be so; yet it is im- 

 portant to recall that the only absolutely 

 known crossing of Bering Strait by a 

 primitive folk was that of the Eskimo 

 working their way westward from 

 America to Siberia; and during the last 

 decade the scientific collaborators of the 

 Jesup expeditions about the northern 

 shores of the Pacific have found clear 

 indications that the mythologies of such 

 aboriginal Asian peoples as the Tchuk- 

 chi originated in America and found 

 their way across the northern seas dur- 

 ing prehistoric times. Both relics and 

 traditions indicate that Chinese and 



