AFTER SEVEN DAYS OF SEA—THIS EMERGED
HILO, HAWAII
An oasis in the desert of the Pacific
Or the wail of the Indian, into whose shop I strayed to get out of the sun, at the downfall of "his" empire, may be the little seed of thought out of which the aspirations of a Fiji reborn will spring.
2
According to the traditions of almost every race on earth, the place of its nativity is the cradle of mankind. Nor does mere accident satisfy. In nearly every instance not only is the belief extant among natives that their race was born there, but that, be the birthplace island or continent, it came into existence by some form of special creation as an abiding-place for a chosen people. The Japanese kami, Izanagi and Izanami, were commissioned by the other gods to "make, consolidate, and give birth to the drifting land." "According to the Samoan cosmogony, first there was Leai, nothing; thence sprung Nanamu, fragrance; then Efuefu, dust; then Iloa, perceivable; then Maua, obtainable; then Eleele, earth; then Papatu, high rocks; then Maataanoa, small stones; then Maunga, mountains. Then Maunga married Malaeliua, or changeable meeting-place, and had a daughter called Fasiefu, piece of dust." The more primitive Melanesians, the Fijians, and the Australoids are less definite in their conceptions of whence they came, having in many cases no traditions or myths to offer.
With all our scientific inquiry, we are to-day still lost in the maze of probable origins of various races. The birthplace of man is as much of a mystery as it ever was. Ninety years ago, Darwin said of the South Pacific: "Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact—that mystery of mysteries—the first appearance of new beings on this earth." And in 1921 Roy Chapman Andrews set out upon a third expedition to Mongolia in search of relics and fossils of the oldest man. He writes:
With the exception of the Java specimen, all fossil human fragments have been discovered in Europe or England. Nevertheless, the leading scientists of the day believe that Asia was the early home of the human race and that whatever light may be thrown upon the origin of man will come from the great central Asian plateau north of the Himalaya Mountains.
Thus his antiquity will doubtless interest man to his dying day. Slogans epitomizing the spirit of races fan the flames of human conflict. Conflict wears down the differences between them, or shatters them and scatters them to the whirling winds. Doubtless the records which seem to us so lucid and so permanent will vanish from the earth in the next half-million years, and our descendants will mumble in terms of vague tradition expressions of their beginning. Or perhaps their linguistics will make ours vulgar and primitive by comparison. Possibly, if our progress and development are not impeded, the hundreds of tongues now spoken on this globe will seem childishly incomplete, and in their stead will be one extremely simple but flexible language spoken in every islet in the seas.