Explored And Settled

How The Pacific Basin Was Explored And Settled

Why is it that two sides of the Pacific Basin are today occupied by the great democracies of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all with a common language, a similar heritage, and virile, prosperous communities with the highest living standards in the world?

WHY is it that Spain, which once claimed the entire ocean on the basis of a Papal bull, is now repre sented on only one side?

Why is it that the Japanese, with the natural bent of an island race for the sea, did not expand into the empty continents across the Pacific long before the English-speaking peoples had established firm footholds there?

These questions are posed and answered in an admirably simple book on the exploration and settle ment of the Pacific Basin by an Aus tralian, Harold Rabling, who now lives in New York. The book is called Pioneers of the Pacific.

The author, whose previous writ ings include a technical analysis of Australia’s power problems, is a mining engineer who, for 30 years, served as executive and director of the Standard-Vacuum Oil Company of New York, with particular respon sibilities for the company’s operations in the Pacific area.

Vivid, Concise

He could easily have made a living as a professional writer, for he has a vivid, concise, straightforward style and the ability to reduce mountains of facts to easily assimilable chapters.

Mr. Rabling begins his book with an account of the “amazing outburst of ocean exploration by the little caravels of Portugal” in the middle of the 15th century. He ends it in the late 1860’s, by which time the formerly vacant lands bordering the Pacific had been transformed into prosperous, modem civilisations.

In the 140 pages in between, he describes the explorations of Magellan, the Spanish settlement of the Philippines, the explorations of Mendana and Quiros, the privateering voyages of Drake and other English adventurers, the seclusion of Japan over two centuries, the rise and decline of Russia’s northern Pacific empire, the discoveries of Captain Cook, the remarkable post-Cook in

vasion of the Pacific by British and American adventurers in search of sea-otter pelts, sealskins, sandalwood and whale oil, and the activities of the United States Exploring Ex pedition under Commodore Charles Wilkes.

By this time, Mr. Rabling’s story has reached the year 1840—an important milestone in the story of the Pacific, for it saw:

Milestone

© The beginnings of the American migration to the Pacific coast over the Oregon Trail. • The beginning of the end of Russian ambitions on the North American continent. © The arrival of the first per manent white settlers in New Zealand. • The abolition of the transporta tion of convicts from Britain to New South Wales. © The adoption of the first con stitution in Hawaii. • The revival of French interest in the Pacific.

The process of filling in the open spaces in California, Canada, Aus

tralia and New Zealand soon followed. And in each case it was the discovery of gold that hastened it. California’s gold was discovered in 1848, Australia’s in 1851, Canada’s in 1858, and New Zealand’s in 1861.

Each discovery brought hordes of immigrants to the goldfields, and so, by the late 1860’s, the formerly vacant lands bordering the ocean were occupied by “a race of people reared in the traditions of free enter prise and constitutional government”.

With a common language and

common aims, the existence of these communities —Mr. Rabling concludes (on his first lame note) —“has proved to be an important influence in the shaping of the world of the Pacific as it is today”.

For people with little knowledge of the subject, Mr. Rabling’s book is an ideal introduction to the history of the Pacific Basin. But experts will certainly profit from it, too.

One tidbit of information in the book that was news even to PI M’s experts is that on the main highway between Nadi airport and Suva there is a monument to the famous Fijian cannibal chief Udre Udre, who “invariably fattened his captives before sending them to the cooking fires.”

The memorial is apparently at Rakiraki on the northern side of Viti Levu.

Fiji’s historian, R. A. Derrick, records that Udre Udre, who was chief of Rakiraki, “was a renowned man-eater whose horrible record probably grew in the telling. Udre Udre’s son told a missionary that Udre Udre placed a stone to record each body he ate, and that the mis sionary counted about 900 stones. —

RL.

(Pioneers Of The Pacific. Angus

and Robertson, $2.50).