THE ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC
Not until four hundred years ago did the body of water now named the Pacific Ocean become known to the people of Europe.
A vague knowledge of a sea that washed the eastern shores of Cathay, or China, was gained from the reports of the famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo. After spending several years in the Orient, Polo returned home in 1295, giving such marvellous accounts of the countries visited and things seen that his stories were but half believed.
In 1531, Balboa, a Spanish explorer stationed at Darien, now Colon, hearing rumors that a great ocean lay to the opposite side, determined to test the truth of the report. Taking with him about three hundred men, he laboriously worked his way through the jungles of the isthmus; and on reaching the top of the divide beheld for the first time the Pacific Ocean. He then hastened forward, and as he reached the shore he waded into the water and took possession of it in the name of his sovereign. He named it the South Sea.
But the vast extent of this sheet of water did not become well known until fifty years later, when brave Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the globe. Two and one-half centuries more elapsed before the memorable voyages and discoveries of Captain Cook disclosed the fact that the new ocean world was studded with countless islands, and that most of them were densely inhabited by savages.
Just how or when all these islands became inhabited is not definitely known. Since the Polynesian languages in general are similar, it is conjectured that the inhabitants of the islands have a common origin and that many of the more northerly groups were peopled by emigrants from the south.
In a general way the name Oceania is applied to all of the islands in the Pacific, but in a more limited sense only to those lying between the American continent and Australasia.
The chief divisions of Oceania are Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Australia, the largest body of land, is usually regarded as a continent. Nearly all the smaller islands are of coral or of volcanic origin; in many instances both agencies have contributed to their formation. The coral and volcanic islands seem to be the tops of mountain ranges that, little by little, have sunk, until only their higher summits are now above sea level.
The central part of the Pacific Ocean is pre-eminently the home of the reef-building coral. Countless islands and reefs, wholly or partly built up by these tiny creatures, are found widely scattered over an immense area limited to one thousand eight hundred miles on each side of the equator. All these formations are composed of the compact limestone remains of coral polyps.
These polyps have the power of extracting carbonate of lime from the sea-water and building it into massive formations which, for the most part, are nearly or completely submerged.