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.
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 massive 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 classic 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 Hellenic 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 Japan.
Though political supremacy is possible even to an island of insignificant size, both the advantages arid the grave disadvantages of small area are constantly asserting 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 constituting 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 pandanus, 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, shells, and sharks' teeth.931
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 Japan, 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 accumulation 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. Japan'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.
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 Japan, 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 Japan, in turn, is surpassed 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 surpassed 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 constitute 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 Madeiras936 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 constituting the Bahamas, show a similar surprising density of population, which in Bermuda and Barbadoes surpasses that of England, and approximates the teeming human life of the Channel Isles.
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 retarded 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 sparse, despite the blight that everywhere follows the contact of superior with primitive peoples.
In all these cases, if economic status be taken into account, we have a density bordering on congestion; but the situation assumes 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
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 sturdy 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 prone 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 scraps 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.
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 sparse 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.
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, molasses, rum, vanilla, aloes, and copra. In Zanzibar this density is 220 to the square mile; in Reunion 230; in Mayotte, the Comores and Seychelles, the average varies from 100 to 145 to the square mile, though Mahe in the Seychelles 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 sparse 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 shoreline with decrease of insular area. Since 65 per cent. of the whole Philippine population inhabits coastal municipalities, 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
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 altitude 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.
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 Curaçao 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
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 inshore 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 inshore 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.
Where an island offers in its climate and soil conditions favorable to agriculture, tillage begins early to assume 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 niggardly in their gifts, but yield a due return for the labor of tillage. The Society964 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 destitute 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 canals, 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 Japan. 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 assumes 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.
In the minute land fragments which constitute Micronesia, fishing is the chief source of subsistence; agriculture, especially for the all important taro, is limited to the larger islands like the Pelews. In the vast islands of western Melanesia, agriculture is on the whole less advanced. New Guinea, where the chase yields support to many villages, has large sections still a wilderness, though some parts are cultivated like a garden. In the smaller Melanesian islands, such as New Hebrides, New Britain and the Solomon group, we find extensive plantations laid out on irrigated terraces, In New Hebrides and the Banks Islands every single village has its flowers and aromatic herbs.971 But it is in Fiji that native island agriculture seems to culminate. Here a race of dark, frizzly haired savages, addicted to cannibalism, have in the art of tillage taken a spurt forward in civilization, till in this respect they stand abreast of the average European. The German asparagus bed is not cultivated more carefully than the yam plants of Fiji; these also are grown in mounds made of soil which has been previously pulverized by hand. The variety and excellence of their vegetable products are amazing, and find their reflection in an elaborate national cuisine, strangely at variance with the otherwise savage life.972
West of Melanesia, the Malay Archipelago shows a high average of tillage. The inhabitants of Java, Madura, Bali, Lombok and Sumbawa are skilled agriculturists and employ an elaborate system of irrigation,973 but the natives of Timor, on the other hand, have made little progress. In the Philippines a rich and varied agriculture has been the chief source of wealth since the Spanish conquest early in the sixteenth century, proving a native aptitude which began to develop long before.974
The dense population of the Mediterranean islands is the concomitant of an advanced agriculture. The connection between elaborate tillage and scant insular area is indicated in the earliest history of classic Aegina. The inhabitants of this island were called Myrmidons, Strabo tells us, because by digging like ants they covered the rocks with earth to cultivate all the ground; and in order to economize the soil for this purpose, lived in excavations under ground and abstained from the use of bricks.975 To-day, terraced slopes, irrigation, hand-made soils, hoe and spade tillage, rotation of crops, and a rich variety of field and garden products characterize the economic history of most Mediterranean islands, whether Elba, the Lipari, Ponza, Procida, Capri, Ischia, Pantellaria, Lampedusa,976 or the Aegean groups. The sterile rock of Malta has been converted for two-thirds of its area into fertile gardens, fields and orchards. The upper stratum of rock has been pulverized and enriched by manure; the surface has been terraced and walled to protect it against high winds. In consequence, the Maltese gardens are famous throughout the Mediterranean.977 In the Cyclades every patch of tillable ground is cultivated by the industrious inhabitants. Terraced slopes are green with orchards of various southern fruits, and between the trees are planted melons and vegetables. Fallow land and uncultivated hillsides, as well as the limestone islands fit only for pastures, are used for flocks of sheep and goats.978
It is in Japan that agriculture has attained a national and aesthetic importance reached nowhere else. Of the 150,000 square miles constituting Japan proper, two-thirds are mountains; large tracts of lowlands are useless rock wastes, owing to the detritus carried down by inundating mountain torrents.979 Hence to-day arable land forms only 15.7 per cent. of the whole area. During the two hundred and fifty years of exclusion when emigration and foreign trade were forbidden, a large and growing population had to be supplied from a small insular area, further restricted by reason of the configuration of the surface. Here the geographical effects of a small, naturally defined area worked out to their logical conclusion, Consequently agriculture progressed rapidly and gave the farmer a rank in the social scale such as he attained nowhere else.980 His methods of tillage are much the same as in overcrowded China, but his national importance and hence his ranking in society is much higher. In Japan to-day farming absorbs 60 per cent. of the population. The system of tillage, in many respects primitive, is yet very thorough, and by means of skilful manuring makes one plot of ground yield two or three crops per annum.981 Every inch of arable land is cultivated in grain, vegetables and fruits. Mountains and hills are terraced and tilled far up their slopes. Meadows are conspicuously absent, as are also fallow fields. Land is too valuable to lie idle. Labor is chiefly manual and is shared by the women and children; mattock and hoe are more common than the plow.982 Such elaborate cultivation and such pressure of population eventuate in small holdings. In Japan one hectar (2 1-2 acres) is the average farm per family.
While Japan's agriculture reflected the small area of an island environment, and under its influence reached a high development, England's from the beginning of the fifteenth century declined before the competition of English commerce, which gained ascendency owing to the easy accessibility of Great Britain to the markets of Europe. The ravages of the Black Death in the latter half of the fourteenth century produced a scarcity of agricultural laborers and hence a prohibitive increase of wages. To economize labor, the great proprietors resorted to sheep farming and the raising of wool, which, either in the raw state or manufactured into cloth, became the basis of English foreign trade. A distinct deterioration in agriculture followed this reversion to a pastoral basis of economic life, supplemented by a growing commerce which absorbed all the enterprise of the country. The steady contraction of the area under tillage threw out of employment the great mass of agricultural laborers, made them paupers and vagrants.983 Hence England entered the period of maritime discoveries with a redundant population. This furnished the raw material for her colonies, and made her territorial expansion assume a solid, permanent character, unknown to the flimsy trading stations which mark the mere extension of a field of commerce.
Even when agriculture, fisheries and commerce have done their utmost, in the various stages of civilization, to increase the food supply, yet insular populations tend to outgrow the means of subsistence procurable from their narrow base. Hence islanders, like peninsula peoples, are prone to emigrate and colonize. This tendency is encouraged by their mobility, born of their nautical skill and maritime location. King Minos of Crete, according to Thucydides and Aristotle, colonized the Cyclades.984 Greece, from its redundant population, peopled various Aegean and Ionian islands, which in turn threw off spores of settlements to other isles and shores. Corcyra, which was colonized from the Peloponnesus, sent out a daughter colony to Epidamnos on the Illyrian coast. Andros, one of the Cyclades, as early as 654 B.C., colonized Acanthus and Stagirus in Chalcidice.985 Paros, settled first by Cretans and then by Ionians, at a very early date sent colonies to Thasos and to Parium on the Propontis, while Samos was a perennial fountain emitting streams of settlement to Thrace, Cilicia, Crete, Italy and Sicily. [Map page 251.]
This moving picture of Greek emigration is duplicated in the Malay Archipelago, especially in the smaller eastern islands. Almost every Malay tribe has traditions based upon migrations. The southern Philippines derived the considerable Mohammedan element of their populations from the Samal Laut, who came from Sumatra and the islands of the Strait of Malacca.986 A Malayan strain can be traced through Polynesia to far-off Easter Isle. Sometimes the emigration is a voluntary exile from home for a short period and a definite purpose. The inhabitants of Bouton, Binungku, and the neighboring islets, all of them located southeast of Celebes, have for the past twenty-five years come in great numbers to the larger islands of Ceram, Buru, Amboina and Banda, where they have laid out and carefully cultivated plantations of maize, tobacco, bananas and coco-palms. Generally only the men come, work two years, save their profits and then return home. These ambitious tillers look like savages, are shy as wild things of the woods, and work naked to the waist.987
Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, where every condition of land and sea tends to develop the migratory spirit, form a region of extensive colonization.988 Settlements of one race are scattered among the island groups of another, making the ethnic boundaries wide penumbras. In some smaller islands of Melanesia the Polynesian colonists have exterminated or expelled the original inhabitants, and are found there now with all their distinctive race characteristics; but in the larger islands, they have been merged in the resident population, and their presence is only to be surmised from the existence of Polynesian customs, such as father-right in New Hebrides and Solomon Island side by side with the prevailing Melanesian mother-right.989 In small islands, like Tongatabu, Samoa and Fiji, emigration becomes habitual, a gradual spilling over of the redundant population and hence not a formidable inundation. In all this insular region of the Pacific, the impulse to emigration is so persistent, that the resulting inter-insular colonization obliterates sharp distinctions of race; it annuls the segregation of an island environment, and makes everywhere for amalgamation and unification, rather than differentiation.990