Note 854 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

Islands do not necessarily derive their population from the land that lies nearest to them. A comparatively narrow strait may effectively isolate, if the opposite shore is inhabited by a nautically inefficient race; whereas a wide stretch of ocean may fail to bar the immigration of a seafaring people. Here we find a parallel to the imperfect isolation of oceanic islands for life forms endowed with superior means of dispersal, such as marine birds, bats and insects.854 Iceland, though relatively near Greenland, was nevertheless peopled by far away Scandinavians. These bold sailors planted their settlements even in Greenland nearly two centuries before the Eskimo. England received the numerically dominant element of its population from across the wide expanse of the North Sea, from the bare but seaman-breeding coasts of Germany, Denmark and Norway, rather than from the nearer shores of Gaul. So the Madeira and Cape Verde Isles had to wait for the coming of the nautical Portuguese to supply them with a population; and only later, owing to the demand for slave labor, did they draw upon the human stock of nearby Africa, but even then by means of Portuguese ships.