Oceania

“ Many culture traits of Middle America and Peru are not found in Oceania: the use of cement in masonry and the vigesimal system of numeration in Middle America; the amazingly intricate Maya calendar and hieroglyphics with the first invention of zero; baked brick in two Mexican sites; bronze in Peru; the hammock; the whistling jar; the manioc press. Some of these New World traits must have been invented here, but we are asked to believe that the others were forgotten in Oceania and remembered in the Americas. One argument for trans-Pacific diffusion is clear and cogent, however. ”

“ The little spheres represented between the tentacles on the margin of the disk, in Figs. 65-67, are eye-specks, and these continue to increase in number with age; in this the Oceania differs from the Eucope, in which it will be remembered there were but two eye-specks in each quarter-segment of the disk throughout life. Fig. 68 represents the adult Oceania in full size, when it averages from an inch and a half to two inches in diameter. It is slow and languid in its movements, coming to the surface only in the hottest hours of the summer days ”

“ I shall describe separately the populations of these four regions, but I must say a few words in advance in regard to the prehistoric periods of Oceania.
[Pg 475]
With the exception of Sumatra, Java, and perhaps Borneo, still connected with Asia at the end of the tertiary period, the rest of Oceania formed an insular world apart, of ancient geological origin. Except the discovery of the Pithecanthropus in Java (see p. 360) , hardly any finds relating to quaternary man can be pointed to in this part of the world. ”

“ In the stone age our manners were probably not superior to those of the natives of Oceania.
We must not, therefore, blame these representatives of humanity for not having risen higher. They have never been a nation. Scattered as their homes are on the wide ocean, and divided as they are into small tribes, without agricultural or mineral resources, without connexions, and with a climate which makes them strangers to want, they could but remain stationary or cultivate none but the most rudimentary arts and industries. ”

“ During the latter half of the nineteenth century practically all of Oceania has been divided among European powers. Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand are peopled by colonists from England; but they possess the character of a great nation rather than that of colonies. A few of the larger islands have become producers of sugar, cotton, and fruit. The long distance from the markets for their products is offset by the low cost of native labor. The coral islands are almost valueless for commercial products ”

“ The term is so far justified in that it harmonizes better than Oceania did with the names of the other continents, and also embodies the two essential facts that it is a south-eastern extension of Asia, and that its central and most important division is the great island-continent of Australia. In a more restricted sense the term Australasia corresponds to the large division including Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. ”

“ Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. ”

“ In many tribes the people live in communal houses like those of the Pueblo Indians of America.
A large part of the population of Oceania is of Malay origin. As a rule the Malaysians are intelligent and take readily to western civilization. They are confined chiefly to the larger islands south and west of the Asian continent. In such parts of Malaysia as have become European possessions, they are farm laborers, and in this employment they have no superiors.
A Malay boy
LINK TO IMAGE
Of all the native peoples of Oceania, the Polynesians are perhaps the most interesting. ”

“ Oceania, group of atolls and reefs in the North Pacific Ocean, about one-half of the way from Hawaii to Australia Geographic coordinates: 9 00 N, 168 00 E Map references: Oceania Area: total: 181.3 sq km
note: includes the atolls of Bikini, Enewetak, Kwajalein, Majuro, Rongelap, and Utirik
water: 0 sq km
land: 181.3 sq km Area - comparative: about the size of Washington, DC Land boundaries: 0 km Coastline: 370.4 km Maritime claims: territorial sea: 12 nm
exclusive economic zone: 200 nm
contiguous zone: 24 nm Climate: tropical; hot and humid; wet season from May to November ”

“ The Asiatic comprises the insular empire of Japan; and, on the continent, China, Korea, and Siberia, the extreme northern territory which, though extending far westward, must be treated as one.
The Oceanic division includes the Australian continent, with the island of Tasmania; the Pacific islands grouped under the names of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, to which last New Zealand is attached, the whole being conveniently associated under the name of Oceania; and the Malay Archipelago, or Malaysia, lying between Australia and the Asiatic continent. ”

“ Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. ”

“ The oceanic islands, on the other hand, are grouped between the tropics in isolated archipelagoes, extending more than halfway across the Pacific. The lines of entry into this insular region lead back to Indo-Malaysia, the cradle-land of mankind and the point of intersection of the three racial regions of the old world. Oceania was, accordingly, peopled from three sources, successive waves of Negro, Caucasic and Mongolic migration coming together in Indo-Malaysia and spreading out again over the islands of the Pacific. ”

“ War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. ”

“ Now there are many large islands at a considerable distance from the continent in which many of the life forms on the slopes facing Australia are Australian, while on the northerly and westerly slopes they are Asian. ”

“ In physical appearance they are tall, well-formed, dark of complexion, and black-haired. In the northern island groups—Tonga, Hawaii, Samoa, Tahiti, and others—which are colonized by European and American peoples, the natives have gradually acquired western civilization. The number of natives has decreased,232 however, and only about one-third of the population of fifty years ago remains to-day.
The animal and vegetable life is peculiar. That of Australia resembles the life forms of a geological age long since past; that of the islands near tropical Asia is Asian in character. ”

“ Two and one-half centuries more elapsed before the memorable voyages and discoveries of Captain Cook disclosed the fact that the new227 ocean world was studded with countless islands, and that most of them were densely inhabited by savages.
Just how or when all these islands became inhabited is not definitely known. Since the Polynesian languages in general are similar, it is conjectured that the inhabitants of the islands have a common origin and that many of the more northerly groups were peopled by emigrants from the south. ”

“ The larger islands nearer to Asia were for the most part fragments of a former extension of the Asiatic or Australian continents; even New Zealand (104,000 square miles) must once have formed part of a huge strip of continental land stretching southwards from New Guinea and north-east Australia. But most of the islands of Micronesia and Polynesia (as distinct from Melanesia [2] ) , though they may have been larger than they are now and have risen out of comparatively shallow seas, were nevertheless always oceanic, that is to say, never connected with any great continent in recent ages. ”

“ A glance at the map of Polynesia is enough to show the fitness of the name given to the myriad islands and islets that stud the whole western half of the vast Pacific. Group after group, island after island, reef everywhere stretching out to embrace reef, north and south of the line for thousands of miles, keeping the mariner ever anxious by day and sleepless by night, seem to tell us, in language that cannot well be mistaken, of mighty continents that once were, and, for anything we know to the contrary, are again to be. ”

“ The highest degree of intimacy is developed in that vast island-strewn stretch of the Pacific constituting Oceanica.550 Here where a mild climate enables the boatman race to make a companion of the deep, where every landscape is a seascape, where every diplomatic visit or war campaign, every trading journey or search for new coco-palm plantation means a voyage beyond the narrow confines of the home island, there dwells a race whose splendid chest and arm muscles were developed in the gymnasium of the sea ”

“ From the hill are perfectly lovely views of the green wooded islands and coral reefs all round, with here and there a glimpse of white houses, pearl-fishing stations, and between the islands always lovely stretches of sea of the most exquisite turquoise blue, pale green and yellow in the shallows, and amethyst purple where the shadows rest. At each island “station” lies a group of sailing-boats, and small white-sailed schooners are plying everywhere. Why, it is quite a lovely place, and the more I have seen of it the more I have admired it. I know no prettier spot anywhere about Australia. ”

“ Apia is full of interesting characters—old beach-combers and retired black-birders, captains and runaway sailors, and ticket-of-leave men from Australia. I know of one man, one of the greatest business men p252 in the town, who is an escaped convict from the French penal settlement in New Caledonia.
The climate here is perfect. With a big wide sandy beach running for miles round the bay, Apia would be an ideal pleasure resort if the steamship connections were better, and if it were nearer to civilisation. ”

“ In endeavouring to meet this demand it must be premised, that while the main object proposed in this volume is to treat of the early indications of the island now recognized as Australia, anterior to the time of Captain Cook, it is impossible to deal with the real or supposed discoveries which may have taken place prior to that date, without referring at the same time to the discovery of the adjacent island of New Guinea and of the great southern continent, of both of which what we now call Australia was in those times regarded as forming a part. ”

“ From a look at a globe or a map of the Eastern hemisphere, we shall perceive between Asia and Australia a number of large and small islands forming a connected group distinct from those great masses of land, and having little connection with either of them. Situated upon the Equator, and bathed by the tepid water of the great tropical oceans, this region enjoys a climate more uniformly hot and moist than almost any other part of the globe, and teems with natural productions which are elsewhere unknown. The richest of fruits and the most precious of spices are Indigenous here. ”

“ Borneo, Celebes, Buru, Jilolo, and the Spice Islands, Timor, Ceram, the eastern Sunda Islands were, of course, with Java and Sumatra on the west, New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago on the east, and the Philippines on the north, continental islands; that is to say, fragments of the former prolongation of Asia towards Australia: old lands, large or small portions of which have always risen above the very shallow sea which now separates them from one another. ”

“ Australia, and the whole of what is known as the zoological province of Australia, stands on an ocean plateau which rarely exceeds 100 fathoms in depth; while immediately beyond it, the ocean suddenly attains a depth of from 1000 to 1,200 fathoms. The edge of this plateau is at Lombock Strait, between Lombock and Sambawa Islands, to the east of Java, and passes northerly through the Strait of Macassar, between Celebes and Borneo, thence easterly, embracing the Molucca Islands and New Guinea, and southerly between Australia and New Zealand and embracing Tasmania. ”

“ This comprises the whole of the east coast of Australia, or New Holland, and whether it was joined to Tasmania on the south, and New Guinea to the north; the dimensions of New Zealand; New Caledonia and the New Hebrides, with the exception of the fact that the northern island of the latter existed; the Fiji Islands; Sandwich Islands; the Phœnix, Union, Ellice, Gilbert, and Marshall Groups, with innumerable small islands scattered here and there; the Cook Islands, and all the Society Islands except Tahiti. ”

“ There does not seem to be the same activity, energy, and business aptitude that exists in the Australian colonies. The Auckland people seem languid and half asleep. Perhaps their soft, relaxing, winterless climate has something to do with it.
Having nothing else to occupy me before the ship sailed, I took leave of my Australian friend, gave him my last messages for Maryborough and Majorca, and went on board. I was wakened up about midnight by the noise of the anchor coming up; and, in a few minutes more, we were off and on our way to Honolulu up the Pacific. ”

“ In fact, not Australia only, but all Australasia has levied tribute upon the flora of the rest of the world; and wherever one goes the results appear, in gardens private and public, in the woodsy walls of the highways, and in even the forests. If you see a curious or beautiful tree or bush or flower, and ask about it, the people, answering, usually name a foreign country as the place of its origin—India, Africa, Japan, China, England, America, Java, Sumatra, New Guinea, Polynesia, and so on. ”