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The National Geographic Magazine 



Japanese junks have been swept to 

 American shores by wrecking storms, 

 and it is easy to imagine the peopling 

 of America by such accidents, or by de- 

 signed voyages through the same waters 

 in the darkness of the prehistoric; yet 

 on the whole the indications are clearer 

 that Asia was peopled in some part from 

 America than that America was peopled 

 in any part from the great continent 

 beyond the Pacific. 



If personal opinion based on original 

 research may again be ventured, the 

 probabilities may be summarized in this 

 way : First, that the Old World and the 

 New were separately peopled by autoch- 

 thones — by veritable children of the soil , 

 growing up independently from un- 

 known ancestry in families and clans and 

 tribes which have merged and blent and 

 integrated into ever larger groups dur- 

 ing the ages ; second, that the chief re- 

 semblances in arts, customs, faiths, and 

 even in languages, are the product of 

 similarities in environment, and hence 

 in conditions and modes of life ; third, 

 that there were occasional interchanges 

 both eastward and westward, though 

 these were not of such extent as mate- 

 rially to affect the course of racial and 

 cultural development ; and fourth, that 

 the extensive peopling of the Oceanian 

 archipelago may be connected with the 

 geographic indications of relatively re- 

 cent subsidence of a mountain-set land 

 whose island crests were places of refuge 

 for tribes and peoples displaced by grad- 

 ual inundation of one-time lowlands now 

 wholly submerged. Anent the last of 

 these probabilities, it is to be observed 

 that many df the Oceanians are masters 

 of a peculiar craft or sense employed in 

 navigating their proas and out-riggered 

 canoes ; they regularly traverse scores 

 or hundreds of miles of open ocean be- 

 yond sight of land, without compass or 

 sextant, by following traditional lines 

 in the water invisible to the better eyes 

 of Caucasians, seemingly under the 

 guidance of an instinct analogous to our 



own feebler instinct of orientation, or 

 sense of direction. The apparent homol- 

 ogy between this sense of the Ocean- 

 ian navigators and the instinct of the 

 migratory birds which still traverse the 

 northern Pacific (just as the European 

 quail spans the Mediterranean in spring 

 and fall migrations) is strikingly close ; 

 and much as the naturalist sees in the 

 persistence of migration routes an in- 

 stinct outlasting geographic boundaries, 

 so the anthropologist must contemplate 

 thepossibilit} T ,if not the probability, that 

 the invisible sailing lines impressed on 

 the brains of Samoan and other island- 

 ers must date back to earlier geographic 

 conditions when the stretches of open 

 sea were shorter than now. 



All these suggestions as to the pre- 

 historic Pacific are of use chieflj" in 

 pointing to the problems of the great 

 world-basin. The archeology of the isl- 

 ands and shorelands is no better devel- 

 oped than the biology of the littorals 

 and deeps ; and in either case only 

 enough is known to sharpen the mental 

 appetite for more and better knowledge. 



THE PACIFIC IN HISTORY 



Passing over the hazy legends of geo- 

 graphic adventure (connected chiefly 

 withlndian Ocean though approaching 

 the Pacific) from the fable-tinged search 

 for the Golden Fleece by Jason and the 

 echo of the discovery of Australia by 

 Norsemen up to the veritable but ill- 

 recorded journeyings of Marco Polo, the 

 history of progressive discoveries in the 

 Pacific comes up as an alluring tale, 

 abounding in adventure, bristling with 

 exciting episodes, and big with lessons 

 for modern men and up-to-date enter- 

 prises. Seen first by Caucasian eyes 

 when Balboa sighted its silver}- expanse 

 in 15 13, the conquest of the great ocean 

 began when, in 1520, Magelhaes — better 

 known as Magellan — entered the basin 

 through the stormy South American 

 strait still bearing his name; and the 



