570 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



A MONGOLIAN HORSE TIITI'F SERVING A 



THKElv months' sentence 



The wooden collar, which is bolted together 

 to make certain that it will not come off, is 

 not removed during the three months, and the 

 prisoner gets what rest he can by sitting down 

 and leaning hack against a post or wall. On 

 the white strips of cloth is written in Mon- 

 golian an account of his crime. During the 

 daytime lie is obliged to keep himself on dis- 

 play in front of the prison (under guard), so 

 that his fellow-men may observe the penalty 

 for stealing horses (see pages 507-551). 



way Islands and Guam (7,846 miles), a 

 branch line was laid from (mam to Yap. 

 From the latter, lines now radiate to 

 Japan, to Shanghai, and to the Dutch 

 East Indies. 



Yap is intrinsically interesting as well 

 as commercially important. The west- 

 ernmost of the Western Carolines, it is 

 situated some 500 miles southwest of 

 Guam and 800 miles east of Mindanao, 

 of the Philippine group. The arrival of 

 Australian troops in October, 1914, pre- 

 vented the Germans from erecting a 

 wireless station here, which would have 

 been of great service in communicating 

 with the commerce raider Emden, then 

 abroad on the highways of the Pacific. 



Although surrounded by an atoll, Yap 

 is of volcanic origin. Its only good har- 

 bor is Tomil Bay. Its pseudonym, "the 

 Island of Stone Money,'' is derived from 

 the fact that native wealth is reckoned in 

 pounds or tons of limestone discs, 

 brought from Babeltop, 300 miles distant. 

 A single "coin" four feet in diameter is 

 said to represent a value of 10,000 coco- 

 nuts. The coconut is the unit of value, 

 for copra is the only article of export. 



TH£ IUST IS NO LONGER "CHANG£lyKSS" 



The natives of Yap, some 7,000 in 

 number, are safely catalogued as Micro- 

 nesians, a term which embraces a variety 

 of peoples of Melanesian, Polynesian, and 

 Malaysian stocks. They have light coffee- 

 colored skins and wavy black hair, dark 

 eyes, and prominent cheek-bones, and are 

 neither as tall nor so strongly built as the 

 natives of Samoa, the Fiji Islands, or 

 Tahiti. They are a docile, kindly, indo- 

 lent people. 



Two portentous agencies are at work 

 in the Orient, and until they become 

 relatively quiescent, political boundaries 

 throughout the great continent will be 

 "subject to change without notice." One 

 of these is the disruptive force in peasant 

 Russia, now felt not only in Siberia, in 

 Russian Turkestan, and in the Trans- 

 caucasus, but also in Persia. The other 

 is Japan, whose natural desire, based on 

 need for territorial expansion, has re- 

 sulted in a reaching out into China and 

 eastern Siberia and into the islands of the 

 Pacific north of the Equator. 



Asia is no longer the "Changeless 

 East" ; it is the Continent of Ceaseless 

 Change. 



Notice of change of address of your GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE) should be re- 

 ceived in the office of the National Geographic Society by the first of the month to 

 affect the following month's issue. For instance, if you desire the address changed 

 for your July number, the Society should be notified of your new address not later 

 than June first. 



