outgrow the means of subsistence procurable
from their narrow base. Hence islanders, like peninsula peoples, are
prone to emigrate and colonize. This tendency is encouraged by their
mobility, born of their nautical skill and maritime location. King
Minos of Crete, according to Thucydides and Aristotle, colonized the
Cyclades.[984] Greece, from its redundant population, peopled various
Aegean and Ionian islands, which in turn threw off spores of settlements
to other isles and shores. Corcyra, which was colonized from the
Peloponnesus, sent out a daughter colony to Epidamnos on the Illyrian
coast. Andros, one of the Cyclades, as early as 654 B.C., colonized
Acanthus and Stagirus in Chalcidice.[985] Paros, settled first by
Cretans and then by Ionians, at a very early date sent colonies to
Thasos and to Parium on the Propontis, while Samos was a perennial
fountain emitting streams of settlement to Thrace, Cilicia, Crete, Italy
and Sicily. [Map page 251.]

This moving picture of Greek emigration is duplicated in the Malay
Archipelago, especially in the smaller eastern islands. Almost every
Malay tribe has traditions based upon migrations. The southern
Philippines derived the considerable Mohammedan element of their
populations from the Samal Laut, who came from Sumatra and the islands
of the Strait of Malacca.[986] A Malayan strain can be traced through
Polynesia to far-off Easter Isle. Sometimes the emigration is a
voluntary exile from home for a short period and a definite purpose. The
inhabitants of Bouton, Binungku, and the neighboring islets, all of them
located southeast of Celebes, have for the past twenty-five years come
in great numbers to the larger islands of Ceram, Buru, Amboina and
Banda, where they have laid out and carefully cultivated plantations of
maize, tobacco, bananas and coco-palms. Generally only the men come,
work two years, save their profits and then return home. These ambitious
tillers look like savages, are shy as wild things of the woods, and work
naked to the waist.[987]

Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, where every condition of land and
sea tends to develop the migratory spirit, form a region of extensive
colonization.[988] Settlements of one race are scattered among the
island groups of another, making the ethnic boundaries wide penumbras.
In some smaller islands of Melanesia the Polynesian colonists have
exterminated or expelled the original inhabitants, and are found there
now with all