population by far the largest town of
the archipelago.[957] This development has come since Greece achieved
its independence. It reminds us of the distinction and doubtless also
population that belonged to Delos in ancient days. Advantageous
commercial location and density of population characterize Kilwauru and
Singapore at the east and west extremities of the Malay Archipelago. The
Bahrein Islands, which England has acquired in the Persian Gulf, serve
as an emporium of trade with eastern Arabia and have a local wealth in
their pearl fisheries. These facts account for the 68,000 inhabitants
dwelling on their 240 square miles (600 square kilometers) of sterile
surface.[958]

[Sidenote: Overflow of island population to the mainland.]

The concentration of population in these favored spots of land with
inelastic boundaries, and the tendency of that population to increase
under the stimulating, interactive life make the restriction of area
soon felt. For this reason, so many colonies which are started on
inshore islets from motives of protection have to be transferred to the
mainland to insure a food supply. A settlement of Huguenots, made in
1535 on an island in the harbor of Rio Janeiro, found its base too small
for cultivation, but feared the attack of the hostile Indians and
Portuguese on the mainland. After three years of a struggling existence,
it fell a prey to the Portuguese,[959] De Monts' short-lived colony on
an island in the mouth of the St. Croix River in 1604 had an excellent
site for defence, but was cut off by the drifting ice in winter from
mainland supplies of wood, water and game, while no cultivation was
possible in the sandy soil.[960]

Such sites suffice for mere trading posts, but are inadequate for the
larger social group of a real colony. The early Greek colonists, with
their predilection for insular locations, recognized this limitation and
offset it by the occupation of a strip of the nearest mainland,
cultivated and defended by fortified posts, as an adjunct to the support
of the islands. Such a subsidiary coastal hem was called a _Paraea_. The
ancient Greek colonies on the islands of Thasos and Samothrace each
possessed such a Paraea.[961] The Aeolian inhabitants of Tenedos held a
strip of the opposite Troad coast north of Cape Lekton, while those of
Lesbos appropriated the south coast of the Troad.[962] In the same way
Tarentum and Syracuse, begun on inshore islands, soon overflowed on to