Influences of Geographic Environment Part 47

[Sidenote: Islands as places of survival.]

What islands have they tend to hold, to segregate, secrete from meddling hands, preserve untouched and unaltered. Owing to this power to protect, islands show a large percentage of rare archaic forms of animal and plant life. The insular fauna of Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea and Madagascar display a succession of strange, ancestral forms going back to the biological infancy of the world. The Canaries in the Atlantic and Celebes In the Pacific are museums of living antiquities, some of them dating probably from Miocene times.[916] Such survivals are found elsewhere only in high mountains, whose inaccessible slopes also offer protection against excessive compet.i.tion. Hence some of the antiquated species of insular Celebes, Formosa, j.a.pan and Hainon occur again on the Asiatic mainland only in the Himalayas.[917]

For man, too, islands and their sister areas of isolation, mountains, are areas of survivals. The shrinking remnants of that half-dwarf Negrito stock which may have formed the aboriginal population of southern Asia are found to-day only in the mountains of peninsular India and in island groups like the Andaman and the Philippines. But even in the Philippines, they are confined either to the mountainous interiors of the larger islands, or to little coastal islets like Polillo, Alabat, Jomalig, and others.[918] [See map page 147.] Yezo, Sakhalin and the Kurile Isles harbor the last feeble remnants of the Ainos, a primitive people who formerly occupied a long stretch of the Asiatic coast south of the Amur mouth. The protected environment of these islands has postponed the doom of extinction toward which the Ainos are hastening.[919] With insular conservatism they dress, live and seek their food on the sea to-day, just as depicted in j.a.panese art and literature at the dawn of history.[920] [See map page 103.]

[Sidenote: Insular survivals of manners and customs.]

It is chiefly on islands of harsh climatic conditions, like Sakhalin, or of peculiarly restricted resources and area, like the Andaman, or of remote, side-tracked location, like Iceland, Sardinia and Cape Breton, that the stamp of the primitive or antiquated is strongest. Even when not apparent in race stock, owing to the ubiquitous colonization of maritime peoples, it marks the language and customs of even these late-coming occupants, because an island environment a.s.serts always some power to isolate. This is due not only to the encircling moat of sea, but also to the restricted insular area, too small to attract to itself the great currents of human activity which infuse cosmopolitan ideas and innovations, and too poor to buy the material improvements which progress offers. If the tourist in Sicily finds the women of Taormina or Girgenti spinning with a hand spindle, and the express trains moving only twelve miles an hour, he can take these two facts as the product of a small, detached area, although this island lies at the crossroads of the Mediterranean. Corsica and Sardinia, lying off the main routes of travel in this basin, are two of the most primitive and isolated spots of Europe. Here the old wooden plow of Roman days is still in common use as it is in Crete, and feudal inst.i.tutions of the Middle Ages still prevail to some extent[921],--a fact which recalls the long survival of feudalism in j.a.pan. The little Isle of Man, almost in sight of the English coast, has retained an old Norse form of government. Here survives the primitive custom of orally proclaiming every new law from the Tynwald Hill before it can take effect,[922] and the other ancient usage of holding the court of justice on the same hill under the open sky. The Faroe Islands and Iceland are museums of Norse antiquities. The stamp of isolation and therefore conservatism is most marked in the remoter, northern islands. Surnames are rare in Iceland, and such as exist are mostly of foreign origin. In their place, Christian names followed by the patronymic prevail; but in the Faroes, these patronymics have in a great many cases become recognized as surnames. So again, while the Faroese women still use a rude spinning-wheel introduced from Scotland in 1671, in Iceland this spinning-wheel was still an innovation in 1800, and even to-day competes with spindles. Hand-querns for grinding wheat, stone hammers for pounding fish and roots, the wooden weighing-beam of the ancient Northmen, and quaint marriage customs give the final touch of aloofness and antiquity to life on these remote islands.[923]

[Sidenote: Effects of small area in islands.]

As all island life bears more or less the mark of isolation, so it betrays the narrow area that has served at its base. Though islands show a wide variation in size from the 301,000 square miles (771,900 square kilometers) of New Guinea or the 291,000 square miles (745,950 square kilometers) of Borneo to the private estates like the Scilly Isles, Gardiner and Shelter islands off Long Island, or those small, sea-fenced pastures for sheep and goats near the New England coast and in the Aegean, yet small islands predominate; the large ones are very few.

Islands comprise a scant seven per cent. of the total land area of the earth, and their number is very great,--nine hundred, for instance, in the Philippine group alone. Therefore small area is a conspicuous feature of islands generally. It produces in island people all those effects which are characteristic of small, naturally defined areas, especially early or precocious social, political and cultural development. The value of islands in this respect belongs to the youth of the world, as seen in the ancient Mediterranean, or in the adolescence of modern primitive races; it declines as the limitations rather than the advantages of restricted territory preponderate in later historical development.

[Sidenote: Political dominion of small islands.]

This early maturity, combined with the power to expend the concentrated national or tribal forces in any given direction, often results in the domination of a very small island over a large group. In the Society Islands, Cook found little Balabola ruling over Ulietea (Raitea) and Otaha, the former of these alone being over twice the size of Balabola, whose name commanded respect as far as Tahiti.[924] The Fiji Archipelago was ruled in pre-Christian days by the little islet of Mbau, scarcely a mile long, which lies like a pebble beside ma.s.sive Viti Levu. It was the chief center of political power and its supremacy was owned by nearly all the group. The next important political center was Rewa, no larger than Mbau, which had for its subject big Mbengga.[925] In the same way, the Solomon group was ruled by Mongusaie and Simbo, just as tiny New Lauenberg lorded it over the larger islands of the Bismarck Archipelago.[926] When the Dutch in 1613 undertook the conquest of the coveted Spice Isles, they found there two rival sultans seated in the two minute islets of Ternate and Tidore off the west coast of Gilolo.

Their collective possessions, which the Dutch took, comprised all the Moluccas, the Ke and Banda groups, the whole of northwestern New Guinea, and Mindanao of the Philippines.[927]

It was no unusual thing for cla.s.sic Aegean isles to control and exploit goodly stretches of the nearest coast, or to exercise dominion over other islands. Aristotle tells us that Crete's location across the southern end of the Aegean Sea confirmed to it by nature the early naval empire of the h.e.l.lenic world. Minos conquered some of the islands, colonized others,[928] and, according to the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, laid Athens under tribute; but his suppression of piracy in these waters and his conspicuous leadership in the art of navigation point to a yet more significant supremacy. So insular Venice ruled and exploited large dependencies. The island of Zealand, strategically located at the entrance to the Baltic, has been the heart and head and strong right arm of the Danish dominion, through all its long history of fluctuating boundaries. England's insularity has been the strongest single factor in the growth of her vast colonial empire and in the maintenance of its loyal allegiance and solidarity. The widely strewn plantation of her colonies is the result of that teeming island seed-bed at home; while the very smallness of the mother country is the guarantee of its supremacy over its dependencies, because it is too small either to oppress them or to get along without them. Now an Asiatic variant of English history is promised us by growing j.a.pan.

[Sidenote: Economic limitations of their small area.]

Though political supremacy is possible even to an island of insignificant size, both the advantages arid the grave disadvantages of small area are constantly a.s.serting themselves. Some developments peculiar to large territory are here eliminated at the start. For instance, robbery and brigandage, which were so long a scourge in peninsular Greece, were unheard of on the small Aegean islands.

Sheep-raising was at an early date safer in England than on the Continent, because wolves were earlier exterminated there. Bio-geography shows an increasing impoverishment in the flora and fauna, of small islands with distance from the mainland. In the Pacific Ocean, this progressive impoverishment from west to east has had great influence upon human life in the islands. In Polynesia, therefore, all influences of the chase and of pastoral life are wanting, while in Melanesia, with its larger islands and larger number of land animals, hunting still plays an important part, and is the chief source of subsistence for many New Guinea villages.[929] Therefore a corresponding decay of projectile weapons is to be traced west to east, and is conspicuous in those crumbs of land const.i.tuting Polynesia and Micronesia. The limit of the bow and arrow includes the northeastern portion of the Philippine group, cuts through the Malay Archipelago so as to include the Moluccas and Flores, includes Melanesia as far as Tonga or the Friendly Isles, but excludes Micronesia, Polynesia and Australia, Even in Melanesia, however, bows and arrows are not universal; they are lacking in peripheral islands like New Caledonia and New Ireland.[930]

The restriction of trees, also, with the exception of the coco-palm and panda.n.u.s, has had its effect upon boat making. This general impoverishment is unmistakably reflected in the whole civilization of the smaller islands of Polynesia and Micronesia, especially in the Paumota and Pelew groups. In the countless coralline islands which strew the Pacific, another restricting factor is found in their monotonous geological formation. Owing to the lack of hard stone, especially of flint, native utensils and weapons have to be fashioned out of wood, bones, sh.e.l.ls, and sharks' teeth.[931]

[Sidenote: Poverty of alluvial lowlands in islands.]

Nor does the geographical limitation end here. Islands have proportionately a scanter allowance of fertile alluvial lowlands than have continents. This follows from their geological history, except in the case of those low deposit islands built up from the waste of the land. Most islands are summits of submerged mountain ranges, like Corsica and Sardinia, the Aegean archipelagoes, the Greater Antilles, Vancouver, and the countless fiord groups; or they are single or composite volcanic cones, like the Canaries, Azores, Lipari, Kurile, Fiji, Ascension, St. Helena and the Lesser Antilles; or they are a combination of highland subsidence and volcanic out-thrust, like j.a.pan, the Philippines, the long Sunda chain and Iceland. Both geologic histories involve high reliefs, steep slopes, a deep surrounding sea, and hence rarely a shallow continental shelf for the acc.u.mulation of broad alluvial lowlands. Among the Aegean Isles only Naxos has a flood plain; all the rest have steep coasts, with few sand or gravel beaches, and only small deposit plains at the head of deep and precipitous embayments. j.a.pan's area of arable soil is to-day only 15.7 per cent. of its total surface, even after the gentler slopes of its mountains have been terraced up two thousand feet. Some authorities put the figure lower, at 10 and 12 per cent.

[Sidenote: Dense populations of islands.]

Yet in spite of limited area and this paucity of local resources, islands constantly surprise us by their relatively dense populations.

More often than not they show a density exceeding that of the nearest mainland having the same zonal location, often the same geologic structure and soil. Along with other small, naturally defined areas, they tend to a closer packing of the population. Yet side by side with this relative over-population, we find other islands uninhabited or tenanted only by sheep, goats and cattle.

In the wide Pacific world comprising Australia and Oceanica, islands take up fifteen per cent. of the total land area, but they contain forty-four per cent. of the population.[932] The insular empire of j.a.pan, despite the paucity of its arable soil, has a density of population nearly twice that of China, nearly three times that of Korea, and exceeding that of any political subdivision of continental Asia; but j.a.pan, in turn, is surpa.s.sed in congestion only by Java, with a density of 587 to the square mile,[933] which almost equals that of Belgium (643) and England (600). Great Britain has a density of population (453 to the square mile) only exceeded in continental Europe by that of Belgium, but surpa.s.sed nearly threefold by that of the little Channel Isles, which amounts to 1254 to the square mile.[934] If the average density of the United Kingdom is greatly diminished in Ireland, just as Italy's is in Sardinia and France's in Corsica, this fact is due primarily to a side-tracked or overshadowed location and adverse topography, combined with misgovernment.

If we compare countries which are partly insular, partly continental, the same truth emerges. The kingdom of Greece has fifteen per cent of its territory in islands. Here again population reaches its greatest compactness in Corfu and Zante, which are nearly thrice as thickly inhabited as the rest of Greece.[935] Similarly the islands which const.i.tute so large a part of Denmark have an average density of 269 to the square mile as opposed to the 112 of Jutland. The figures rise to 215 to the square mile in the Danish West Indies, but drop low in the bleak, subarctic insular dependencies of Greenland, Iceland and the Faroes. Portugal's density is tripled in the Madeiras[936] and doubled in the Azores,[937] but drops in the badly placed Cape Verde Island, exposed to tropical heat and the desiccating tradewinds blowing off the Sahara. Spain's average rises twenty-five per cent. in the Canary Islands, which she has colonized, and France's nearly doubles in the French West Indies. The British West Indies, also, with the exception of the broken coral bank const.i.tuting the Bahamas, show a similar surprising density of population, which in Bermuda and Barbadoes surpa.s.ses that of England, and approximates the teeming human life of the Channel Isles.

[Sidenote: Density of population in Polynesia.]

This general tendency toward a close packing of the population in the smaller areas of land comes out just as distinctly in islands inhabited by natural peoples in the lower stages of development. Despite the r.e.t.a.r.ded economic methods peculiar to savagery and barbarism, the Polynesian islands, for instance, often show a density of population equal to that of Spain and Greece (100 to the square mile) and exceeding that of European Turkey and Russia. "Over the whole extent of the South Sea," says Robert Louis Stevenson, "from one tropic to another, we find traces of a bygone state of over-population, when the resources of even a tropical soil were taxed, and even the improvident Polynesian trembled for the future."[938] He calls the Gilbert atolls "warrens of men."[939]

One of them, Drummond's Island, with, an area of about twenty square miles, contained a population of 10,000 in 1840, and all the atolls were densely populated.[940] To-day they count 35,000 inhabitants in less than 200 square miles. The neighboring Marshall group has 15,000 on its 158 square miles of area. The Caroline and Pelew archipelagoes show a density of 69 to the square mile, the Tonga or Friendly group harbor about 60 and the French holdings of Futuma and Wallis (or Uea) the same.[941] So the Bismarck Archipelago, Solomon, Hawaiian, Samoan and Marianne islands have to-day populations by no means spa.r.s.e, despite the blight that everywhere follows the contact of superior with primitive peoples.

[Sidenote: Various causes of this density.]

In all these cases, if economic status be taken into account, we have a density bordering on congestion; but the situation a.s.sumes a new aspect if we realize that the crowded inhabitants of small islands often have the run of the coco plantations and fishing grounds of an entire archipelago. The smaller, less desirable islands are retained as fish and coco-palm preserves to be visited only periodically. Of a low, cramped, monotonous coral group, often only the largest and most productive is inhabited,[942] but that contains a population surprising in view of the small base, restricted resources and low cultural status of its inhabitants. The population of the wide-strewn Paumota atolls was estimated as about 10,000 in 1840. Of these fully one-half lived on Anaa or Chain Island, and one-fourth on Gambier, but they levied on the resources of the other islands for supplies.[943] The Tonga Islands at the same time were estimated to have 20,000 inhabitants, about half of whom were concentrated on Tongatabu, while Hapai and Varao held about 4,000 each.[944]

[Sidenote: Crowded and vacant islands.]

This is one of the sharp contrasts in island life,--here density akin to congestion, there a few miles away a deserted reef or cone rising from the sea, tenanted only by sheep or goats or marine birds, its solitude broken only by the occasional crunching of a boat's keel upon its beach, as some visitant from a neighboring isle comes to shear wool, gather coco-nuts, catch birds or collect their eggs. All the 500 inhabitants of the Westman Isles off the southern coast of Iceland live in one village on Heimey, and support themselves almost entirely by fishing and fowling birds on the wild crags of the archipelago.[945] An oceanic climate, free contact with the Gulf Stream, and remoteness from the widespread ice fields of Iceland give them an advantage over the vast island to the north. Only twenty-seven of the ninety islands composing the Orkney group are inhabited, and about forty smaller ones afford natural meadows for sheep on their old red sandstone soil;[946] but Pomona, the largest Orkney has 17,000 inhabitants on its 207 square miles of territory or 85 to the square mile. The Shetlands tell the same story--29 out of 100 islands inhabited, some of the _holms_ or smaller islets serving as pastures for the st.u.r.dy ponies and diminutive cattle, and Mainland, the largest of the group, showing 58 inhabitants to the square mile. This is a density far greater than is reached in the nearby regions of Scotland, where the county of Sutherland can boast only 13 to the square mile, and Invernesshire 20. Here again insularity and contracted area do their work of compressing population.

The causes of this insular density of population are not far to seek.

Islands can always rely on the double larder of land and sea. They are moreover p.r.o.ne to focus in themselves the fishing industry of a large continental area, owing to their ample contact with the sea. Shetland is now the chief seat of the Scotch herring fishery, a fact which contributes to its comparatively dense population. The concentration of the French export trade of Newfoundland fish in little St. Pierre and Miquelon accounts for the relatively teeming population (70 to the square mile) and the wealth of those sc.r.a.ps of islands. So the Lofoden Islands of Norway, like Iceland, Newfoundland and Sakhalin, balance a generous sea against an ungenerous soil, and thus support a population otherwise impossible.

[Sidenote: Oceanic climate as factor.]

For these far northern islands, the moderating effect of an oceanic climate has been a factor in making them relatively populous, just as it is on tropical isles by mitigating heat and drought. The prosperity and populousness of the Bermuda Islands are to be explained largely by the mild, equable climate which permits the raising of early vegetables and flowers for English and American markets. Like climatic conditions and a like industry account for the 2,000 souls living on the inhabited islands of the Scilly group. Here intensive horticulture supports a large force of workmen and yields a profit to the lord proprietor. Syros in the Cyclades fattens on its early spring vegetable trade with Athens and Constantinople.[947]

In the Mediterranean lands, where drought and excessive heat during the growing season offer adverse conditions for agriculture, the small islands, especially those of fertile volcanic soil, show the greatest productivity and hence marked density of population. Though the rainfall may be slight, except where a volcanic peak rises to condense moisture, heavy dews and the thick mists of spring quicken vegetation. This is the case in Malta, which boasts a population of 2,000 to the square mile, exclusive of the English garrison.[948] Little Limosa and Pantellaria, the merest fragments of land out in the mid-channel of the Mediterranean, have a population of 200 to the square mile.[949] The Lipari group north of Sicily average nearly 400 on every square mile of their fertile soil;[950] but this average rises in Salina to 500, and in Lipari itself, as also in Ponza of the Pontine group, to nearly 1300.

Here fertile volcanic slopes of highly cultivated land lift vineyards, orchards of figs, and plantations of currants to the sunny air. But nearby Alicuri, almost uncultivated, has a spa.r.s.e population of some five hundred shepherds and fishermen. Panaria and Filicuri are in about the same plight. Here again we find those sharp island contrasts.

[Sidenote: Relation of density to area.]

The insular region of the Indian Ocean, which is inhabited by peoples quite different in race and cultural status from those of the Mediterranean, yet again demonstrates the power of islands to attract, preserve, multiply and concentrate population. This is especially true of the smaller islands, which in every case show a density of population many times that of the neighboring mainland of Africa. Only vast Madagascar, continental in size, repeats the sparsity of the continent.

An oceanic climate increases the humidity of the islands as compared with the mainland lying in the same desiccating tradewind belt. Moreover their small area has enabled them to be permeated by incoming Arab, English, and French influences, which have raised their status of civilization and therewith the average density of population. This culminates in English Mauritius, which shows 540 inhabitants to the square mile, occupied in the production of sugar, mola.s.ses, rum, vanilla, aloes, and copra. In Zanzibar this density is 220 to the square mile; in Reunion 230; in Mayotte, the Comores and Seych.e.l.les, the average varies from 100 to 145 to the square mile, though Mahe in the Seych.e.l.les group has one town of 20,000 inhabitants.[951]

In the Malay Archipelago, an oceanic climate and tropical location have combined to stimulate fertility to the greatest extent; but this local wealth has been exploited in the highest degree in the smaller islands having relatively the longest coastline and amplest contact with the sea. The great continent-like areas of Borneo, New Guinea and Sumatra show a correspondingly spa.r.s.e population; Java, smaller than the smallest of these and coated with mud from its fertilizing volcanoes, supports 587 inhabitants to the square mile; but this exceptional average is due to rare local productivity. Java's little neighbors to the east, Bali and Lombok, each with an area of only about 2100 square miles, have a density respectively of 338 and 195 to the square mile.

This density rises suddenly in small Amboina (area 264 square miles), the isle of the famous clove monopoly, to 1000,[952] drops in the other Moluccas, where Papuan influences are strong, even to 20, but rises again in the pure Malayan Philippines to 69. In the Philippines a distinct connection is to be traced between the density of population and smallness of area. The explanation lies in the attraction of the coast for the sea-faring Malay race, and the mathematical law of increase of sh.o.r.eline with decrease of insular area. Since 65 per cent.

of the whole Philippine population inhabits coastal munic.i.p.alities, it is not surprising that the 73 islands from ten to a hundred square miles in area count 127 inhabitants to the square mile, and those of less than ten square miles, of which there are nearly a thousand, have a density of 238.[953]

This same insular density, supported by fertility, fisheries and trade, appears again in the West Indies, and also the contrast in density between large and small islands down to a certain limit of diminutiveness. The Greater Antilles increase in density from Cuba through smaller Haiti and Jamaica down to little Porto Rico, which boasts 264 inhabitants to the square mile. In the smaller area of the Danish Indies and Guadeloupe about this same density (215 and 274) reappears; but it mounts to 470 in Martinique and to 1160 in Barbadoes.[954]

[Sidenote: Island resorts.]

Climate advantages often encourage density of population on islands, by attracting to them visitors who make a local demand for the fruits of the soil and thereby swell the income of the islands. For instance, about the densely populated region of the Gulf of Naples, Procida has 14,000 inhabitants on its one and a half square miles of area, while fertile Ischia and Capri have 1400 to the square mile. Here a rich volcanic soil, peaks which attract rain by their alt.i.tude and visitors by their beauty, and a mild oceanic climate delightful in winter as in summer, all contribute to density of population. Sicily, Malta and Corfu also gain in the same way in winter. The Isle of Man owes some of its recent increase of population, now 238 to the square mile, to the fact that it has become the summer playground for the numerous factory workers of Lancashire in England.

[Sidenote: Density of population affected by focal location for trade.]

Sometimes climatic advantages are reinforced by a favorable focal point, which brings the profits of trade to supplement those of agriculture.

This factor of distributing and exporting center has undoubtedly contributed to the prosperity and population of Reunion, Mahe, Mauritius and Zanzibar, as it did formerly to that of ancient Rhodes and modern St. Thomas at the angle of the Antilles. Barbadoes, by reason of its outpost location to the east of the Windward Isles, is the first to catch incoming vessels from England, and is therefore a focus of steamship lines and a distributing point for the southern archipelago, so that we find here the greatest density of any island in the West Indies.[955] The 9405 inhabitants of Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas and the 15,000 of Willemsted on Curacao give these also a characteristic insular density. Samos, blessed with good soil, an excellent position on Aegean maritime routes, and virtual autonomy, supports a population of 300 to the square mile.[956]

Focal location alone can often achieve this density. Syros, one of the smallest and by nature the most barren of the Cyclades, though well tilled is the great commercial and shipping center of the Aegean, and has in Hermupolis with its 17,700 population by far the largest town of the archipelago.[957] This development has come since Greece achieved its independence. It reminds us of the distinction and doubtless also population that belonged to Delos in ancient days. Advantageous commercial location and density of population characterize Kilwauru and Singapore at the east and west extremities of the Malay Archipelago. The Bahrein Islands, which England has acquired in the Persian Gulf, serve as an emporium of trade with eastern Arabia and have a local wealth in their pearl fisheries. These facts account for the 68,000 inhabitants dwelling on their 240 square miles (600 square kilometers) of sterile surface.[958]

[Sidenote: Overflow of island population to the mainland.]

The concentration of population in these favored spots of land with inelastic boundaries, and the tendency of that population to increase under the stimulating, interactive life make the restriction of area soon felt. For this reason, so many colonies which are started on insh.o.r.e islets from motives of protection have to be transferred to the mainland to insure a food supply. A settlement of Huguenots, made in 1535 on an island in the harbor of Rio Janeiro, found its base too small for cultivation, but feared the attack of the hostile Indians and Portuguese on the mainland. After three years of a struggling existence, it fell a prey to the Portuguese,[959] De Monts' short-lived colony on an island in the mouth of the St. Croix River in 1604 had an excellent site for defence, but was cut off by the drifting ice in winter from mainland supplies of wood, water and game, while no cultivation was possible in the sandy soil.[960]

Such sites suffice for mere trading posts, but are inadequate for the larger social group of a real colony. The early Greek colonists, with their predilection for insular locations, recognized this limitation and offset it by the occupation of a strip of the nearest mainland, cultivated and defended by fortified posts, as an adjunct to the support of the islands. Such a subsidiary coastal hem was called a _Paraea_. The ancient Greek colonies on the islands of Thasos and Samothrace each possessed such a Paraea.[961] The Aeolian inhabitants of Tenedos held a strip of the opposite Troad coast north of Cape Lekton, while those of Lesbos appropriated the south coast of the Troad.[962] In the same way Tarentum and Syracuse, begun on insh.o.r.e islands, soon overflowed on to the mainland. Sometimes the island site is abandoned altogether and the colony transferred to the mainland. The ancient Greek colony of Cyrene had an initial existence on the island of Platea just off the Libyan coast, but, not flourishing there, was moved after an interval of several years to the African mainland, where "the sky was perforated" by the mountains of Barca.[963] De Monts' colony was removed from its island to Port Royal in Nova Scotia.

[Sidenote: Precocious development of island agriculture.]

Where an island offers in its climate and soil conditions favorable to agriculture, tillage begins early to a.s.sume an intensive, scientific character, to supply the increasing demand for food. The land, fixed in the amount of area, must be made elastic in its productivity by the application of intelligence and industry. Hence in island habitats, an early development of agriculture, accompanied by a parallel skill in exploiting the food resources of the sea, is a prevailing feature. In Oceanica, agriculture is everywhere indigenous, but shows greatest progress in islands like Tonga and Fiji, where climate and soil are neither lavish nor n.i.g.g.ardly in their gifts, but yield a due return for the labor of tillage. The Society[964] and Samoan Islands, where nature has been more prodigal, rank lower in agriculture, though George Forster found in Tahiti a relatively high degree of cultivation.[965] The small, rocky, coralline Paumotas rank lower still, but even here plantains, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, yams, taro and solanum are raised. The crowded atolls of the Gilbert group show pains-taking tillage. Here we find coco-palms with their roots fertilized with powdered pumice, and taro cultivated in trenches excavated for the purpose and located near the lagoons, so that the water may percolate through the coral sand to the thirsty roots.[966] To lonely Easter Isle nature has applied a relentless lash. At the time of Cook's visit it was woodless and boatless except for one rickety canoe, and therefore was almost excluded from the food supplies of the sea. Hence its dest.i.tute natives, by means of careful and often ingenious tillage, made its parched and rocky slopes support excellent plantations of bananas and sugar-cane.[967]

The islands of Melanesia show generally fenced fields, terrace farming on mountain sides, irrigation ca.n.a.ls, fertilized soils, well trimmed shade trees and beautiful flower gardens,[968] proof that the cultivation of the ground has advanced to the aesthetic stage, as it has in insular j.a.pan. In Tonga the coco-palm plantations are weeded and manured. Here, after a devastating war, the victorious chief devotes his attention to the cultivation of the land, which soon a.s.sumes a beautiful and flourishing appearance.[969] In Tongatabu, which is described by the early visitors as one big garden, Cook found officials appointed to inspect all produce of the island and to enforce the cultivation of a certain quota of land by each householder.[970] Here agriculture is a national concern.