CONTENTS AN INTRODUCTION THE ISLAND WORLD AND ITS PEOPLES BOTANICAL NOTES COMPILED FROM W. WYATT GILL'S JOTTINGS OF THE PACIFIC. CHRISTUS REDEMPTOR INTRODUCTION The Field. If we are to study the entrance of the Gospel into the Island world of the Pacific, it behooves us to gain as clear a concept as may be of the field. Its Importance. The centre of interest in the world's history is constantly changing. A hundred years ago the Pacific was aside from the main currents of the world's life. Lines of communication were few, interests were remote. To-day the development of the commerce of the Pacific is one of the subjects that engross attention, and the winning of that commerce one of the world-prizes to be struggled for. To the west of us lie the undeveloped resources and unawakened forces of the future. These facts of commerce give new significance to the islands that dot the Pacific like stepping stones in a brook. Its Vastness. It is hard to realize the dimensions of that Island world we call Oceania. Most of our maps are printed on so small a scale that the islands look quite neighborly an impression which a salt dash of statistics soon corrects. From east to west, Oceania stretches 120°, one-third the earth's circumference, and from north to south 80°. This covers an area of 27,000,000 square miles, about one and onehalf times the size of the continent of Asia. On this surface is scattered a land area of 168,000 square miles. If New Zealand be excluded, the area of all the Oceanic islands is only fifty-eight thousand square miles. To illustrate the isolation of the separate members of the great fleet of islands, take the Carolines. They are fortynine in number, in area all told 600 square miles (the size of an English county), scattered over a sea-surface the size of the Mediterranean. So wide is the sea and so small the island world that the Spanish navigators of the sixteenth century cruised for fifty years among these islands without ever sighting any save a very few. Divisions. The island world may be most correctly divided into four divisions — Malaysia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Of these Malaysia contains most land and Micronesia least. The names signify, The Malay Islands, The Black Islands, The Little Islands, and the Many Islands. These groups of islands may again be classified into two grand divisions, the Continental and the Oceanic. Continental Islands are those which lie near and parallel to the Continents of Asia and Australia, from the Aleutian Islands on the north to Sumatra and New Zealand on the south. The Oceanic Islands include all the rest. Formation. The Oceanic Islands are of two kinds, the Coral and the Volcanic. The Coral Islands have been built up by the slow work of |