ROMANCE OF THE PACIFIC.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVI, Issue 262, 3 April 1914, Page 3

ROMANCE OF THE PACIFIC.

ftirrxs OF AXCIKXT CITV. PROFESSOR SELLS' STORY. At the Canterbury College Hall, Christehurcli, on Saturday evening Professor .f. Macmillan lirown delivered a popular lecture on "The Komance of the Pacific." , Professor Brown said that he intended that evening to indicate the lines of study which had occupied him since he

relinquished a professorial chair at Canterbury College. He did not intend to romance about the Pacific, nor to indulge in such wild speculations as that which had recently been made by a writer who conjectured that the Pacific Ocean was a chasm formed by the breaking away of the moon from the earth.

Thorn were two theories to account for the coral reefs and atolls which so liberally besprinkled the Pacific. Darwin's theory was that these were a mark of subsidence. The other theory was that of Murray, of the Challenger expedition, who considered that these coral atolls were proof of a pushing upward of the ocean bottom. At a depth of 120 ft in the sea the temperature was too low for the coral insect to work, so that the degree of pushing tip must have been abnormal if Murray's theory were correct. The speaker was inclined to think that Darwins theory was the more tenable in respect to the Pacific. There were evidences, however, in the Pacific of both subsidence and upheaval. It was around the borders of the Pacific that most of the elevating had been done. Thp Pacific Coast of America, with the Andes in the South and the Rocky Mountains in the North was a case in point. Ofl' the coast of Peru a new range of mountains was rising under the sea. The process that formed the mountain ranges and the deep ocean troughs was still going on, though 'extremely slowly. New volcanoes made their appearance in the Pacific very frequently, and these volcanic outbreaks caused both subsidence and upheaval, so that there was ground for the theories of both Darwin anu Murray.

At Ponape, in the Caroline Group, tinspeaker found some old ruins- on a shelving reef. There was there no sign of subsidence whatever. The town must have originally been a regular Venice. It had been planned in about fifty tiny islets, with waterways between.' The buildings had been destroyed by wen. and still more so by vegetation. Tropical vegetation exercised an enormous leverage, and the growth could lift large stone 3 and tear walls asunder. The ruined town of Ponape was so overgrown with vegetation that it took two hours' hard cutting away of it before photographs could be taken. The wall? of the great buildings of the town were in some, instances fifteen and sixteen feet thick. Two buildings were quite evidently temples. The town had been in the remote past the capital of an archipelagic empire. Its people came from afar off. They were skilful navigators and held mastery over their empire by their mastery of the sea. At Ponape alone in Polynesia the chiefs traced their lineage through the fathers. The common people, in common with all the rest of the Polynesians, traced their descent through "the mothers alone.

There was a similar water-city on the west coast of Japan, and the speaker had little doubt that the ancient watercity of Ponape was built by Papanesc. People in the Ponape island and in the Marshall Islands had many physiognomical features in common with the Japanese. The ancient pottery taken from certain Polynesian islands was exactly similar to that found in the kitchenmiddens of .Japan. There was also an exact similarity between the primitive looms found in the Caroline Islands and Dutch New Guinea, and the primitive loom of Japan. There were evidences of a Japanese intrusion even in. New Zealand. The Maoris many ages ago possessed a korotangi, a model of a bird, carved in stone. This was used as an emblem and carried in battle. It brought bad luck, however, and was buried. Generations afterward;* it was found again, and the chiefs met •and held a tangi over it. In the waiatas sung at, the tangi, songs handed down from generation to generation, it was distinctly stated that the bird was not •made in New Zealand, but came from afar off, from Hawaiki. The speaker had seen the little model. It was not 'Maori carving, and could have been made nowhere but in Japan. Reverting to the ancient city of Ponape, Professor Brown said that at the sea entrance to. the waterways of the. city great piles of rocks had been placed. evidently to block the entrance. There was a tradition that a race of blackmarauders had finally overthrown the empire which had its capital at Ponape. At an island 400 miles from Ponape the speaker found a Native chief who could write in ancient script. He had obtained the complete alphabet of fifty - one characters. The script had no resemblance to the Easter Island or Central American scripts. It was not rude, but conventional, and showed all the evidences of long usage, and development. ' It was far ahead of Chinese heirogly.phs. Here was evidence of a cnttured nation —of a degree of civilisation much higher than anything at present existing among the natives of the Pacific.

Easter Island was the mere cemetery of vanished nation. The Easter Island script was discovered in 18(i4 l>v a missionary. It was given on tablets. This script, together witli the great stone statues found on the island, bespoke a highly .organised civilisation. The present natives could not carve hard stone ( as the original inhabitants did. All the evidences pointed to the annihilation of the nation responsible for these carvings. There were exactly similar statues in northern Peru, and more advanced examples of the same school of Hciilpture in Central America. Over the Whole of Polynesia, a region 5000 miles square, there was only one language, wijli about a dozen different dialects of that language. The source of that language must have been the land known in Maori mythology as Ilawaiki. It had probably been submerged many hundred years ago. In Polynesian mythology llakaiki always figured as being at the bottom of the sea. The Polynesians were the only oceanic navigators before the invention i of the compass. The Norwegians were merely coastal voyagers, but the Polynesians set out on journeys thousands of milea across ocean. Almost in mod- J ern times there was a record of a party of Maoris setting out from New Zealand to find the lost land of Hawaiki. Professor Brown went on to give a essential unity of origin of Polynesian dialects. He concluded with a warning against the Japanese peril and a condemnation of "soap-box orators." At the conclusion of his address he showed a number of interesting slides, illustrating ;lie matters dealt with in his lecture. ~ \