"American Polynesia" in 1859 
By E. H. Bryan, Jr. 
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Jarvis Island in 1935-Photograph by Author 
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N the y ear 1859 a German geographer by the name of 
iiehm produced an extensive treatise on the geog- 
taphy of the central Pacific ocean. This paper, which 
was published in D r . A. Petermann', Mittheilungen, a 
well-known geographical journal of Justus Perthes’ Geog- 
raphischer Anstalt, in Gotha, summed up all of the in¬ 
formation about the islands in this region which was known 
at that time. 
• i K , eflr , n . W3S P rom P ted to write his account of these 
IS ‘ mds ’ wfllch lnc lude the Equatorial Islands, the Phoenix 
group, and the scattered islands which lie north of a line 
connecting Samoa and the Society Islands, by the appear¬ 
ance of a published announcement of the numerous guano 
islands in the central Pacific, which had been claimed by 
American citizens under the Act of Congress of August 18, 
• l 6 j W ,,Ch ? ade 11 posslbIe for them to occupy unclaimed 
islands for the purpose of removing guano. Forty-eight 
such islands were listed, although some of the names 
apply to the same island and some islands have been shown 
not to exist at all. i 
We do not propose to present a translation of this en¬ 
tire article, the German text of which occupies twenty 
quarto pages, but some of the observations and conclusions 
of this painstaking geographer may be of interest, in the 
ight of recent political activities in the central Pacific. He 
says: 
The above islands are strewn over a wide territory, 21 
degrees of latitude in width and 38 degrees of longitude 
in length, in the center of the Pacific Ocean, extending 
rotn the Marshall, Gilbert and Ellice groups orf the west 
to the Tuamotu and Marquesas groups on the east, and 
rom Samoa and the Society Islands on the south through 
the ninth paTallel of latitude north. The equator cuts the 
area in about the middle, the 180th meridian in its western 
part. Since it possesses no common name, and but few of 
names ^t d C ° nnecte< l int0 with common 
names, ,t does not seem Unfitting for us to choose the 
name American Polynesia’ in view of the possession of the 
United States. We believe that in most cases it is a shame 
to introduce new names into geography, but here, where 
no o der name ,s at hand, and where a special relationship 
■ f * ’ Uch a P roce dure seems justified and also necessary 
if one sees a necessity of using a broader description of the 
characteristics of territory. 
least T k h i S o Centrai - Part f I*' PaCifiG ° bean is one the 
known regions of the world. The usual routes be- 
ween Asia and Australia on the one side and America on 
e other pass far to the north and south of it; only the 
easternmost part is crossed by ships which travel between 
Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands. Scientific and surveying 
nTwilTe 8 ’ 7 “ Br ^ ht -> Kotzebue! 
d keS ’ have onl Y scratched its surface; besides tnese 
one is restricted to the sparse and often unreliable reports 
whalers. On this account it would be hastv for us to re- 
gard tins list as correct without closer examination. Of the 
48 islands cited, not less than 21 certainly do not exist or 
are the same as others more exactly known, and of the re 
roaming 27 islands, six still await a reliable localization 
Despite a century of searching by zealous explorers the 
old Roggeween discoveries’ have not been found again 
If it seems strange that the United States should seize 
possession of islands the existance and location of which is 
questionable, one cannot deny at least certain right to the 
remaining known ones, which, with but few exceptions 
were discovered or first carefully explored by their vov-’ 
777 ^ ChanCe thr ° Ugh whaIers > finally princi¬ 
pal through the great Wilkes expedition. But what value 
these new ppssessions have remains to be proven, as will 
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