Note 765 — Chapter XII · —Continents And Their Peninsulas

W.H. Dall finds the inhabitants of the Pacific slope of North America conspicuously allied with Oceanica in cultural achievements, whose origin he therefore assigns to that vast congeries of islands stretching from Asia toward South America in latitude 25° south. These islands, closely clustered as far as the Paumota group, straggle along with widening spaces between, through Easter Isle, which carries the indestructible memorials of a strange civilization, through Sala-y-Gomez, San Felix, and St. Ambrose almost to the threshold of the Peruvian coast. It is to be noted that these islands lie just outside the westward-bearing Equatorial Current and trade-winds, on the margin of the South Pacific anti-cyclonic winds and a southern current which sets towards the Peruvian coast.765 A more probable avenue for the introduction of these Polynesian or Malayan elements of culture is found in O.T. Mason's theory, that primitive mariners of the southwestern Pacific, led into migration by the eternal food quest, may have skirted the seaboard of East Asia and Northwest America, passing along a great-circle route through the succession of marginal seas and archipelagoes to various ports of entry on the Pacific front of America. Such a route, favored by the prevailing marine currents and winds from the southwest, and used repeatedly during long periods of time, might have introduced trans-Pacific elements of race and culture into the western side of America.766