THE PACIFIC OCEAN ITS ISLANDS One of the most distinctive features of the Pacific Ocean is the vast number of islands and island-groups, some of which are volcanic, but by far the greater number are of coral formation. Most of the islands of volcanic origin are skirted, or entirely encircled, by coral reefs. The whole of the islands of the Pacific west of Australia are frequently called Polynesia.
In the North Pacific, the larger islands lie close to the eastern shores of Asia, and extend in an almost unbroken line from the peninsula of Kamtchatka to the Malay Archi pelago—the largest island-group in the world. To the south of the Sea of Okhotsk we have the large island of halien, and the chain of the Kurile Islands, continued south wards in the larger Japan Islands of Jesso, Niphon, Sikokf, and Kiusiu. The Loo C hoo Islands and Formosa extend the line nearly to the Philippines (Luzon, Mindanao, Pala wan, &c.), and thence to the Malay Archipelago—of which the Ladrones, Caroline, Pelew, and Sulu Islands, Gilolo Isle, and the northern portions of Borneo and Celebes, are included in the North Pacific. The eastern basin of the North Pacific is greatly inferior to the western in the number and size of its islands. The principal are—St. Lawrence and Gore Islands, in Behring's Sea, which is bounded on the south by the chain of the Aleutian Islands. With the exception of Kodiak Island, off Alaska, and Prince of Wales, Queen Charlotte, and Vancouver Islands, off British Columbia, there are only a few small islets along the coasts of the United States, Mexico, and Central America. In the open ocean we have the volcanic group of the Sandwich Islands, and, further west, the small islets of Marshall and Gilbert.
In the South Pacific occur by far the larger number of groups of islets of coral formation, and larger islands of vol canic origin. Of the Malay Archipelago, the principal islands on the Pacific side are—Borneo, Celebes, Moluccas, Papua or New Guinea, New Britain, and New Ireland. Off the south eastern promontory of New Guinea we have the Louisiade Archipelago; but along the eastern coast of Australia, from Cape York to Cape Howe, there is an entire absence of any large islands, with the single exception of Great Sandy Island. Inside the Great Barrier Reef, however, there are a number of smaller islets. To the south of Australia we have Flinder's Island and Tasmania, and, further east, the two large islands (North and South) of New Zealand. North and east of New Zealand the islands are remarkably grouped together in a latitudinal belt, between the parallels of and S. lat. The principal groups from west to east are—Solomon Islands, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Fiji, Friendly, Samoa or Navigators, Cook's, Society, and Marquesas Islands, and the Low Archipelago. Off the coast of Ecuador we have the Galapagos Islands, under the equator ; Juan Fernandez, off Chili ; Chiloe and other islands, included in the Patagonian Archipelago, along the western coasts of Patagonia ; and the western islands of Tierra del Fuego. Of the smaller islands, the only one worthy of notice is Antipodes Island, so called on account of its being nearly antipodal to the British Isles.