Note 838 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

Isolation and accessibility are recorded in the ethnic stock of every island. Like its flora and fauna, its aboriginal population shows an affinity to that of the nearest mainland, and this generally in proportion to geographical proximity. The long line of deposit islands, built of the off-scourings of the land, and fringing the German and Netherland coast from Texel to Wangeroog, is inhabited by the same Frisian folk which occupies the nearby shore. The people of the Channel Isles, though long subject to England, belong to the Franco-Gallic stock and the langue d'oïl linguistic family of northern France. The native Canary Islanders, though giving no evidence of previous communication with any continental land at the time of their discovery, could be traced, through their physical features, speech, customs and utensils, to a remote origin in Egypt and the Berber regions of North Africa prior to the Mohammedan conquest.838 Sakhalin harbors to-day, besides the immigrant Russians, five different peoples—Ainos, Gilyaks, Orochons, Tunguse, and Yakuts, all of them offshoots of tribes now or formerly found on the Siberian mainland a few miles away.839