PACIFIC OCEAN QUESTIONS. The huge expanse of the Pacific, covering half the globe, has obstructed human mi gration and intercourse till recent times. There was only one way of reaching America from Asia, and that was over Behring's Straits, a shallow connection between the Arctic and the Pacific, 36 m. broad. It was doubtless across this gap that the New World was peopled. The Kuro Siwo or tropical current which runs north along the East Coast of Japan and when it reaches its northern limit bends south-east along the American Coast may have carried craft on to a shore far from home, and thus Japanese or Chinese junks may have been borne on to the islands on the north-west coast of America or even on to the continent itself. There is a zone of westerly winds that might assist seacraft from Asia to America, but the equatorial zone of calms and variable winds makes migration or even drift across the broadest part of the ocean improbable. The southern zone of westerlies, com monly called "the roaring forties" lying between 4o and 6o de grees south is the only one that could give easy passage from west to east such as a migration or trade route demands ; but the landless character of the Pacific there makes it improbable, espe cially as an unmaritime people occupied Australia, and New Zealand was uninhabited till the daring sailors of Polynesia reached it. After that time Maori canoes seem to have come as far east as the South American coast as evidenced by the likeness of the Araucanian stone axe to the Polynesian, and especially the identity of the name for it in both regions (toki), the identity of a polished war-club with cutting edges and wristcord found early last century in a grave in Ecuador with the Maori mere, the use of the earth-oven and of an intoxicating drink made by chewing the root of a plant in ancient Chile, and especially the identity of the Araucanian name of this last (cawau) with that of the similarly brewed Polynesian drink (kawa).
Problem of Polynesia.—By far the most difficult of Pacific questions is that of the peopling of the far-spread groups of the centre and east of the Ocean. The voyagers of the 18th century
observed the identity of the people who occupied the widely divided islands of this vast region in customs, language and physique, and called them the Polynesians, or people of the many islands. And when they went away west through Melanesia, Papuasia and Indonesia and found that most of the languages they encountered had a proportion of their vocabulary mani festly related to, if not identical with, Polynesian words, and the numerals the same all through, they assumed that the language was one and the same, and called it Malayo-Polynesian. The fur ther conclusion that it indicated the same race was too manifestly in conflict with the pronounced racial differences to be long held. That there is a negroid element in the physique of many Poly nesians is undenied, but how it came into the Pacific is one of its difficult questions; for the universal custom in Polynesia of massaging the nose of the baby as soon as it is born, into the flat, negroid form, is meant to add to the beauty of the face, and that idea of beauty could not have arisen if there was an ab original negroid race in the islands, which the newcomers sub dued. The ethnologist must rely on other features of the physique; and there are plenty to distinguish this people from those to the west of them.
The Age of Steam.—It was the age of steam that brought the Pacific ocean into world history and made Pacific questions urgent. The era that was to bring the two great cultured racial sections of mankind into closer contact and to make the great ocean fulfill its destiny as the arena of history began when the pursuit of gold drew crowds to California and Australia; but not in earnest till railways across North America commenced to direct the trail of the immigrants to the western lands and the cheapness and capacity of steamer traffic peopled the east of Australia and New Zealand and drew to it Oriental traders and labourers. Not till near the end of the 19th century did the white man realise the great part the Pacific was to play in the history of mankind.