532 COMPULSORY MIGRATIONS IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 



the formation of commercial relations.' Yet other factors which com- 

 pelled the Oceanic peoples to leave their native islands must not be 

 overlooked. It is the nature of these islanders to trust themselves 

 confidently to the sea, hoping soon to find an island where they can 

 settle. 



It is not surprising that we can record no vessel driven out of her 

 course in the Southern Hemisphere, which extended to South America. 

 Probably no one would assert that such an event happened, though it 

 is not impossible. Dillon mentions, as a noteworthy example, that in 

 June, 1824, an American ship ran into the harbor of Valparaiso, which 

 had sailed from Mulgrave Achipelago, past Samoa, with the wind 

 blowing constantly from the west and northwest. In the higher 

 southern latitudes "the brave west winds" are proverbial with mari- 

 ners. Since, under force of natural conditions, an immigration into 

 South America from the west is not absolutely impossible, there is in 

 some degree an analogy in the northern and southern basins of the 

 Pacific with regard to the possibility of the dispersion of human 

 beings. 



But this analogy can exist only so long as the relations of the wind 

 and currents in both basins are the same. In the vicinity of the 

 equator — in point of fact slightly north of it — these relations are sym- 

 metrical, and complications of these relations first become operative 

 when the groups of islands on the continents place obstacles in their 

 way. But while the ocean north of the equator is closed by masses of 

 land, and the northern equatorial stream is thus forced back upon itself, 

 in the eastern portion of the southern part there is a movement of the 

 masses of water toward the equator, and in the western a similar one 

 toward the pole; in the center the sea, so to speak, is neutral. 



Our chart shows that compulsory voyages become more and more 

 infrequent the farther we go eastward from Asia, and, south of the 

 equator, voyages with the trade wind are largely in the majority. This 

 proves on one side that the accident of such a journey is most closely 

 connected with the wind, and, on the other, that the continent of Aus- 

 tralia is capable only in a small degree of transforming the relations of 

 the wind sufficiently to produce the phenomena we encountered in the 

 first district, when the huge masses of land in Asia exactly reverse the 

 directions of the wind and currents. 2 In fact, the currents of the air 



'Lesson believes that the Polynesian colonies in the New Hebrides were founded 

 only in a limited degree by castaways; but we think that we have cited so many 

 examples that the priority of tbe compulsory voyage is evident. There is no doubt 

 that in addition to such incidents, intentional voyages must also haA r e been made; 

 otherwise the ethnographical picture of our islands would be even more motley 

 than it is. 



-The cause of the circumstance that we find no instance in our second district of 

 a vessel being driven out of her course from the west toward the east appears to be 

 that the inhabitants of the Hebrides, Solomon Islands, etc., undertake only voyages 

 along the coast, as 0. Finsch (Reise in die Siidsee, p. 37) has pointed out. 



