Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

—288 AUSTRALASIA.lY.Eastern Micronesia :Marshall, Gilbert, and Ellice Archipelagoes.These gi'Ouj)S, which stretch east of the Carolines about 2,-500 miles trans-A'ersolj^ to the equator, all belong to the same geological formation, and are alldisijosed in the same direction. From the geograiihical standpoint they should bestudied together, although inhabited by different ethnical populations.The Elliceand part of the Gilbert Islands are in this respect Polynesian lands, while themore important Marshall groujj belongs to Micronesia.I'olitically also thej- form different areas, being already distributed ofEciallyamongst two European powers. The Marshalls, whose trade is monopolised byHamburg merchants, form part of the German colonial empire, whereas in 1886the Gilbert and Ellice Archipelagoes were declared to lie within the sphere ofBritish interests.But were priority of discovery to confer any right of possession,all shoiild certainly be assigned to Spain.The San Bartolomeo sighted by Loyasain 1525 was probably one of the Marshalls ; but in any case the " Jardines," sonamed by Alvaro de Saavedra in 1529, certainly belonged to this group, as didalso the Pescadores visited by other navigators during tke sixteenth century.In1567 Mendana de Neyra also sailed through the southern Ellice group. None ofthese islands, however, were exactly determined before the systematic explorationof the Pacific two centuries later.In 1767 Wallis firsPsurveyed two members of the Pescadores ;then Marshalland Gilbert, returning from Port Jackson in 1788, traversed these regions ofEastern Micronesia, and studied in detail the position and form of tlie groupshenceforth known by their names. Other designations, however, have also beengiven them, and the Gilbert, for instance, have been called the Kingsmill and theLine Islands.Marshall and Gilbert were followed by other English navigators,and then at the close of the Napoleonic wars Kotzebue and Chamisso made theirmemorable expedition through the Micronesian atolls on board the Russian vessel,the Iturik. In 1823 Duperrey also visited two important members of the Marshallgroup, and since then interesting memoirs have been jjublished by traders andmissionaries long resident in various parts of these archipelagoes, whose collectivearea may now be estimated at about 350 square miles, with a total population offifty-five thousand.Nearly all the islands in the three archipelagoes, which rest on a common1marine bed less than 900 fathoms deep, are disjwsed in the direction from northwestto south-east. A moderate ui^heaval of this bed would unite them all withthe Samoan Archipelago in a long narrow stretch of dry land. "With the exceptionof three or four islands probably upheaved by igneous action, all the Marshall,Gilbert, and Ellice groups are of low coralline formation, rising little more thanfive or six feet above sea-level, except where shifting dunes have been formed bythe winds.Some of these coral islands have been united by the marine alluvia in continuouslands without break or lagoons. But most of them are atollts with an outercircuit of islets and reefs, and a central lagoon offering shelter to boats, and some-