Pacific Islands

“ All voyagers agree that for varied beauty of form and colour the Society Islands are unsurpassed in the Pacific. Innumerable rills, fed by the fleeting clouds which circle round the high lands, gather in lovely streams, and, after heavy rains, torrents precipitate themselves in grand cascades from the mountain cliffs — a feature so striking as to have attracted the attention of all voyagers, from Wallis downwards. Round most of the islands there is a luxuriant coral growth ”

“ Its innumerable islands are the chief feature of the Pacific Ocean. The continental islands include the Aleutian, Kurile, Japan, and Philippine Islands, and the archipelago between the Malay Peninsula and Australia; the Oceanic Islands include countless groups, volcanic and coral, chiefly in the southern hemisphere, between the Sandwich Islands and New Zealand. Commerce on the Pacific Ocean is only beginning, but will increase vastly with the extension of the United States westward, the colonisation of Australia, and the opening of Chinese and Japanese ports. ”

“ 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 natives of this group have obtained for themselves the reputation of being the most treacherous and bloodthirsty of the Pacific Islanders. Here, however, as in other groups, the inhabitants have been judged according to the circumstances attending the visit of the navigator. If he has come into collision with them, he paints their conduct in the darkest colours ”

“ It is idle for a layman like myself to speculate upon the origin of the figures on this island. The remains of a forgotten people are not altogether unique in the Pacific, for in the Caroline Islands, in Tonga and elsewhere, are strange monuments just as inexplicable, though very different in form. ”

“ The isles of the Pacific give evidence that, long before the dawn of authentic history, man lived there. Indeed, as the islands which gem that ocean, from their configuration and position, seem to be but the elevated plateaus and mountain peaks of a continent that has gone down beneath the blue wave of the Pacific, so, throughout Polynesia can be traced the fragmentary remains of a civilization, the greater portion of which has been completely buried by the waters of oblivion, leaving only here and there a trace to reconstruct, if we can, the entire structure. ”

“ Where is the mind that has not dwelt in its young enthusiasm on the summer beauty of the Islands of the Pacific? That has not, from the day that Captain Cook first fell in with them, wandered in imagination with our voyagers and missionaries through their fairy scenes—been wafted in some magic bark over those blue and bright seas—been hailed to the sunny shore by hundreds of simple and rejoicing people—been led into the hut overhung with glorious tropical flowers, or seated beneath the palm, and feasted on the pine and the bread-fruit? ”

“ Inhabitants.—The population of the archipelago is about 19,000, of whom about 370 are whites or half-castes. The natives, a branch of the Polynesian race, are the most progressive and most intellectual in the Pacific Islands, except the Hawaiians. They have exercised an influence over distant neighbours, especially in Fiji, quite out of proportion to their numbers. Their conquests have extended as far as Niué, or Savage Island, 200 m. east, and to various other islands to the north. ”

“ The Pacific Islands question is of paramount importance. Under the altered conditions now existing, which in the future will be greatly changed, to the advantage of other nations, by the construction of the Nicaragua and Panama Canal, numbers of industries will be greatly affected. In fact, it is difficult to grasp the momentous issues involved. Unless British statesmen grasp the situation and provide therefor, they will find in years to come the weak spot. They will discover that the most deadly blow will be struck at our Empire in the Pacific itself. ”

“ Man, animals, and plants have entered the Pacific from the west, whilst the most available currents are from the east; and one may be perhaps permitted the solecism that the Pacific islands have apparently been stocked with their shore-plants, with their aborigines, and with much of their fauna by currents running in the wrong direction. These Pacific islands could only have had a direct communication with the Old World, from which they have mainly derived their shore-plants, by the currents ”

“ For as, when a Pacific continent existed, the whole geography of the earth's surface would probably be very different from what it now is, the present continents may not then have risen above the ocean, and, when they were formed at a subsequent epoch, may have derived some of their inhabitants from the Polynesian area itself. It is undoubtedly true that there are proofs of extensive migrations among the Pacific islands, which have led to community of language from the sandwich group to New Zealand ”

“ Across the Pacific they made a safe and pleasant voyage. In the warm waters of the Pacific they sailed among those wonderful coral atolls, rings of low shore, decked with palms, grouped in beautiful archipelagoes, whose appearance has never failed to delight the navigator, and whose composition is one of the most interesting subjects known to students of the earth’s structure and history. Some of these coral islands Villalobos took possession of in the name of Spain. These were perhaps the Pelew Islands or the Carolines. ”

“ I must confess, before I conclude, that I was induced to write the narrative of our voyage, not merely to amuse my readers, but to interest them in the dark-skinned inhabitants of the almost countless beautiful islands spread over the Pacific, and to induce them to give their warm support to the missionary efforts now making to convey the blessed light of the gospel to those savage races so long plunged in the utter darkness of heathenism. A wonderful work has already been accomplished. Thousands and tens of thousands of the Pacific Islanders have become civilised and enlightened ”

“ The invention of the Protectorate is, of course, very useful in certain cases. Many of the Pacific Islands are the natural heritage of the future Australian people, and it would have been most unfair to them to allow alien nations to seize upon points of vantage about their very gates. ”

“ For thousands of years these innumerable islands in the Pacific had been the habitation of passionate men, of men who had come out in their vessels from over Kim's way with decks that carried a hundred or more persons; persons who doubtless also entertained themselves with games because too busy to play; persons with hopes and aspirations. A thousand and more years ago the present inhabitants of Polynesia may have dreamed of rearing a new India, a wider Caucasia, just as the Pilgrims and the persecuted of Europe dreamed, or the ambitious Englanders of New Zealand. ”

“ The fact that you cannot go anywhere without riding the waves, and that it takes two whole days by steamer to get from Fiji to Samoa, and four from Fiji to New Zealand, and then four again between New Zealand and Australia, a water-consciousness takes possession of you, and the islands become mere ledges upon which you rest occasionally. Something of the joy of being a bird on the wing is the experience of the traveler in the Pacific seas. ”

“ This ingenious and barbaric ornamentation of the body, practised by isolated savage races, seems to have been universal among the inhabitants of the Pacific Islands, though the great distances which separate them, as well as the lack of all ordinary means of intercommunication, would lead to the belief that they could not have borrowed the idea from one another. ”

“ In the South Pacific islands, as in Fiji, Samoa, Rarotonga, and in the Tahitian group, it flourishes in low, moist localities at and near the coast, by the side of streams and estuaries, and in the rich soil of the lower valleys. In the Rewa delta in Fiji it is especially abundant, often bordering the creeks in the mangrove swamps, and occupying stations that are under water when the river is in flood. It may extend inland in the various groups, but it is in the low-lying, moist, coast regions that it mostly thrives ”

“ We had visited a good many islands in the Pacific, engaged in settling the disputes of the natives or trying to settle them, punishing evil doers, supporting the consuls and missionaries, surveying occasionally hitherto unknown harbours, and endeavouring to make the British flag respected among the dark-skinned inhabitants of those regions.
I with another midshipman and a boat’s crew had landed on a beautiful island of the Western Pacific to bring off a cargo of cocoa-nuts and breadfruit with which the natives had promised to supply us. ”

“ But elsewhere, though the Polynesian and Melanesian peoples are far from being exterminated, they are diminishing in numbers from one cause and another, [308] and those that survive will probably fuse in blood with the white colonists. Many of these Pacific islands are earthly paradises, so far as climate and fertility of soil are concerned. They will doubtless some day become densely inhabited, and their prosperity will justify the efforts, the sufferings, and even the crimes and mistakes of the Pioneers. ”

“ Island Groups, and all the outlying Pacific Islands (including the Daito (Ohigashi or Oagari) Island Group, and Parece Vela (Okinotori) , Marcus (Minami-tori) and Ganges Habomai (Hapomaze Island Group (including Suisho, Yuri, Akiyuri, Shibotsu and Taraku Islands) and Shikotan Island. 3. ”

“ Although sad the picture, the results bear no comparison to the world at large, in the benefits accruing to civilization by acquiring a foothold on these islands, which, from their position and resources, are shortly destined to become of vast importance to commercial enterprise in the Pacific. ”

“ I favor this policy because I want my country to become a power in the Pacific. All my life I have wanted this country to own the West Indies, the Bermudas, the Bahamas and Barbadoes. They are our islands. They belong to this continent, and for any other nation to take them or claim them was, and is, a piece of impertinence and impudence.
So I would like to see the Sandwich Islands annexed to the United States. They are a good way from San Francisco and our Western shore, but they are nearer to us than they are to any other nation. ”

“ Whether we compare the condition of the natives of the other islands in the Eastern Archipelago or of the peasants of Europe at the same time the general well-being of the Philippine mission villagers was to be envied. A few quotations from unimpeachable witnesses, travelers of wide knowledge of the Orient, may be given in illustration and proof of this view. The famous French explorer of the Pacific, La Pérouse, who was in Manila in 1787, wrote: "Three million people inhabit these different islands and that of Luzon contains nearly a third of them. ”

“ They are also conveniently placed, in a more general point of view, since every vessel in the Pacific must proceed to the southward beyond their latitude, before doubling Cape Horn, on their passage to England or America.
The Americans are fully sensible of the advantageous position of the islands, and frequently visit them for the purposes of refitting or refreshment; they are also resorted to for similar purposes by the whaling ships of France and other nations, whilst they have been hitherto only too much neglected by those of the nation to which they belong. ”

“ The problem of man in the Pacific bristles with difficulties differing in degree but not in kind from those relating to the flora. Whenever a particular theory seems on the point of being well established, some disturbing question arises, and as with the plant, we are never able to push our facts quite home. Since I first visited the Solomon Islands, now twenty-four years ago, the Pacific islander and his flora have deeply interested me. The history of man and of the plant cannot be separated in the Pacific; and the same determining principles of distribution have affected both. ”

“ In the Pacific are the Aleutian Islands, Kadiak, the Alexander and Queen Charlotte groups, Vancouver and other British-Columbian Islands, the Santa Barbara group, Bevilla-Gigedo, the Pearl Islands, and others in the Gulf of Panama, the Galápagos, Juan Fernandez and the associated islets, Chiloe and the Chonos Archipelago. In the Arctic Ocean there are many large but unimportant islands. ”

“ Although both Hawaii and the Philippines are under American rule, they are like different worlds. The Land of the Palm and Pine is a much bigger problem for the United States than Hawaii. The latter is nearer home, a smaller group of islands, and is quite Americanized. It is the commercial hub of the Pacific, an important coaling station, an outlying protection for the California coast. The natives are of Polynesian extraction and American education; they are quite unlike the Filipinos in character, who are Malaysian and have had centuries of Spanish influence. ”