34° T HE National Geographic Magazine 



over Jervis and New Nantucket until 

 1889, when H. M. S. Cormorant sailed 

 by, gorged the former at a gulp, and 

 thrust a clinging claw through the 

 strong Yankee aroma of the name half 

 shielding the latter ; other footholds 

 were forgotten, and the American flag 

 inclined homeward — until Alaskan op- 

 portunities and Hawaiian appeals re- 

 kindled the earlier flush of normal 

 growth, and the Star-spangled Banner 

 was again unfurled to the outer world. 

 During the lost decades Russia reached 

 out to Pacific ports, Germany grasped 

 some oceanic gems, Japan jumped into 

 the foreground of the national stage, 

 while our insatiate cousinly — cozenly? — 

 neighbor pursued the tiresome tactics 

 of the Forty-ninth parallel, the Maine 

 line, the seal islands, the Alaskan 

 boundary, and all the rest — in the words 

 of the down - south camp - meeting, 

 "Jes' inchin' along, inchin' along, 

 inchin' along to' a' ds Glory." So began, 

 and so ended, the first era of American 

 expansion in the province of the Pa- 

 cific. 



Meantime other, albeit feebler, forces 

 were at work ; other, albeit softer, races 

 than the Caucasian were pursuing the 

 paths of human destiny, paths leading 

 ever from lower planes to higher — for of 

 such is the course of human progress. 

 The black men of the Austral subcon- 

 tinent and of the insular bridge lead- 

 ing thence from man's primordial cradle 

 on Asian and African coasts retreated 

 before exuberant Nature, shrank from 

 the touch of higher intelligence, fled the 

 beast-gods of their own mystic creation ; 

 for as glimpsed by Kipling, 



This is the story of Evarra — man — 

 Maker of Gods in lands beyond the sea. 



The brown men of the islands and shore- 

 lands pressed forward in physical de- 

 velopment until the Samoan excelled the 

 Greek in bodily vigor and statuesque 



beauty; but since the end of the brown 

 man's ambition was ease and comfort, 

 with but occasional spurts of strenuous 

 exercise, the world was not rewrought 

 at his hands. The yellow man of the 

 shorelands studied in a severer school 

 and learned to spare no toil or effort, so 

 that he rewrought his own fraction of 

 the world in his own patient way, and 

 raised his Flowery Kingdom to the high- 

 est rank of empire, only to stop at his 

 own walls of exclusion. Meantime and 

 after, a strain of brown and yellow 

 blent, and, invigorated in the mixing 

 after a curious law of human develop- 

 ment, found lodgment on an island prov- 

 ince; and there the generations were 

 pent and trained in Nature-conquest 

 until they developed a vigor and prepo- 

 tency of blood and brain which, in the 

 fullness of time, enabled them to take 

 rank among the world-makers — for in 

 this class the Japanese must ever stand. 

 The story of China through her un- 

 counted cycles of stead}' growth , through 

 her slow but certain rise from barbaric 

 faiths to a practical cult of the Golden 

 Rule, through the tedious stages of 

 germinant letters and arts, was well 

 summarized in our course of lectures 

 on Asia a year ago; the more acute ac- 

 tivity and swifter progress of Japan, 

 with the peculiar senses of humanity 

 and artistic perfection so well developed 

 among her folk, were clearly protrayed 

 in the initial lecture of this course by 

 Professor Fenollosa; while other facts 

 and features of oriental progress are too 

 many 'for easy telling. 



The brown and the yellow and the 

 mixed strain were still on their upward 

 course when the white stock pushed 

 across the great ocean; the contacts and 

 interactions soon brought up a series of 

 problems for solution by the hard pro- 

 cesses of living experience; yet the 

 greatest of these problems, the greatest, 

 indeed, in all human history, remain un- 

 solved today — and their name is Legion. 



