CHAPTER I. 
SOURCES OF MELANESIAN MATERIAL. 
In the course of our investigations into the anthropogeography of 
the Pacific area we are soon brought to recognize that, while a certain 
thread is drawn through the varying patterns of the fabric, the quality 
of our information varies widely in the several districts into which 
that area has been grouped. From a motive of merely temporary 
convenience it will be'just as well to revive from the older systems of 
geography the once familiar designation ‘‘Oceanica,’’ which was 
added as a sort of supplement to the list of the continents of the 
world. When first employed the term was intended to gather up all 
the minor units of the Pacific and adjacent Asiatic sea, so that no part 
of the earth’s surface might escape the ritual ceremony of being 
bounded on the north by this and on the south by that other, and of 
having a capital situated on such and such river. The mind cramped 
in youth by that sort of geography—I believe that the thin and very 
Square volume covered in slaty blue paper decorated with the whole 
world reduced to a pair of pancake twins bore the name of one Mon- 
teith—finds the real geography, the kind that lies at the back of 
beyond, quite unorthodox. 
It has been given me to find no little geography of the sort which 
one approaches with sails close-trimmed to a steady trade-wind 
breeze, which comes upon the sight as first a mere notch upon the 
horizon in a negative manner of distant vision, then appears a blue 
cloud which turns to green slopes and mountain peaks arising from 
the ring of coral and the ever-dancing circlet of thunderous foam. In 
such geography I confess a particular fondness for Bougainville of 
the Solomons, the island which should be the particular habitat of 
the Bougainvillea, but is not, since no one has arisen to provide a 
synoptic relation between botany and geography. I have coasted 
Bougainville through all its length, I have penetrated its interior a 
dozen miles and thought myself lucky that I could retrace exactly 
the miles of my inward path from a people who incline to extend a 
somewhat pressing invitation to dinner in which the relation of guest 
to viand is quite simply stated in terms of gastronomy. Fond as I 
am of Bougainville, the influence of a now remote Monteith has 
been so strongly set in grain that I find myself apologetic because 
this so shudderingly delightful island of my fancy has no capital upon 
any river, nothing whatever which can be committed to memory as 
metropolis. A charming land, but geographically incomplete. 
Monteith’s Oceanica, as I find myself forced to remember it, began 
at Sumatra and ended at Sala y Gomez. It included between the 
western S and the eastern S, a decoration which suggests the collar 
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