Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

286 AUSTEALASIA.Mucli veneration is shown for the dead and for those animals, such as lizards andeels, into whose bodies they are supposed to have migrated. The Polynesians ofNukunor and Satoan are the only natives who have carved wooden idols beforewhich they prostrate themselves in solemn adoration.But the religious rites varygreatly in the different islands, and in respect of customs and institutions theCaroline tribes are broken into endless fragments. Even some of the smallerislands are divided into " several kingdoms " incessantly at war, or else maintainingan " armed peace." Most of the chiefs succeed by hereditary right, while othersare elected by their peers. They are usually regarded as owners of the commonterritory, and most of the produce is their property.Although since Eurojiean skijajjers have monopolised the trade of the Pacificislands, they have ceased to make distant voyages in their famous outriggers, thenatives of the Carolines are still daring navigators, for whom the deep has noterrors. Their pilots are able to navigate the high seas guided only by the starsand the direction of the waves. Formerly they maintained schools of navigationand astronomy, where the young of both sexes were, taught the relative position ofthe constellations, the hours of the rise, azimuth, and setting of the stars, therevolutions of the planets, the course of winds and currents, the divisions of thecircle, the direction of remote archipelagoes from the Philippines in the west toHawaii in the east.The horizon was divided into twelve, and even twenty-eightand thirty-two arcs of a circle, and in some atolls there were sj)ecial names forthirty-three stars or stellar groups by which they- were guided on the boundlessocean. They visited the Marianas, over 250 miles distant, without any intermediatestation and even against cross currents. The pilots of the Caroline and Marshallgroups possess the so-called nieclos, a sort of chart ingeniously constructed withshells or pebbles to represent islands, and bits of stick for the equator, the meridian,the route to follow, the degrees or periods of navigation and the cross currents.They understand the compass almost at a glance, and soon learn to make longvoyages by the magnetic needle.Tajj (Vap, Giiap), the large island lying nearest to the Philippines, is the mostEuropeanised in the archipelago. The centre of government for the WesternCarolines and Pelew group is stationed at Tamil, near the chief roadstead ; herealso are settled the foreign traders, mostly Germans, who export copra andbeche-de-mer. The natives, formerly much given to trade, have lost nearly alltheir traffic, and profit little by the movement of exchanges. For currency theystill use shells and other objects pierced with holes and strung together, like theChinese coins.Ponape, largest and formerly most populous of the Carolines, is likely toacquire great importance as a re- victualling station for shipping ; several portsaccessible through passages piercing the reefs are sheltered by the encirclingbarrier, and the foreign traders have already extensive plantations on the island.On the coralline clifEs near the east side are seen the remains of prehistoric structuresconsisting of thick walls which are built of huge basalt columns placedhorizontally, and measuring from 26 to 36 feet in length. The natives have no tradi-