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VOYAGERS OF THE PACIFIC One of the great epochmaking inventions was the outrigger canoe which is of Polynesian or perhaps Malay origin It made practicable the exploration of the Pacific and the settlement of island groups separated from one another by vast distances Tin great sailing canoes in which migrants from Tahiti voyaged northward over thousands of miles of track ¬ less ocean to the Hawaiian Islands nobody knows how many centuries ago giving to that archipelago its first population carried eighty or more men and women presumably with children accompanying The Pacific does not deserve its name It is a tumultuous ocean and great must have been the courage of those who adventured forth upon it in quest of new and unknown lauds Lacking the out ¬ rigger device their frail barks for which paddles served as a supplementary motive power must quickly have been swamped Captain Cook the first white man explorer to map the Pacific found all the island groups inhabited The people did not say to him We are discovered at last They were themselves the discoverers Long centuries before Captain Cook was born they had traversed all parts of that ocean and the Polynesian navi ¬ gators had mapped it for themselves with curious charts made of little sticks Children in that part of the world are brought up in boats They are amphibious Canoes for themselves they make out of hollowed logs with sticks of bamboo for out ¬ riggers Land and water are the same to them they are equally at home in the sea or on terra firrna Washington Star
