their distinctive race characteristics; but in the larger
islands, they have been merged in the resident population, and their
presence is only to be surmised from the existence of Polynesian
customs, such as father-right in New Hebrides and Solomon Island side
by side with the prevailing Melanesian mother-right.[989] In small
islands, like Tongatabu, Samoa and Fiji, emigration becomes habitual, a
gradual spilling over of the redundant population and hence not a
formidable inundation. In all this insular region of the Pacific, the
impulse to emigration is so persistent, that the resulting inter-insular
colonization obliterates sharp distinctions of race; it annuls the
segregation of an island environment, and makes everywhere for
amalgamation and unification, rather than differentiation.[990]

[Sidenote: Modern emigration from islands.]

Among highly civilized peoples, where better economic methods bring
greater density of population and set at the same time a higher standard
of living, emigration from islands is especially marked. Japan has seen
a formidable exodus since an end was put to its long period of
compression. This has taken the form of widespread emigration to various
foreign lands, notably the Hawaiian Islands and the United States, and
also of internal colonization in its recently acquired territory in
Formosa and Korea.[991] The Maltese have spread from their congested
island, and are found to-day as gardeners, sailors and traders along all
the Mediterranean coasts.[992] Majorca and the more barren Cyclades[993]
tell the same story. The men of Capri go in considerable numbers to
South America, but generally return home again. The Icelanders often
pull themselves out of the stagnation of their lonely, ungenerous island
to become thrifty citizens of western Canada.

[Sidenote: Maritime enterprise as outlet.]

Emigration from islands readily throws itself into the channel of
navigation and foreign trade. The northern Sporades, especially Skiathos
and Skopelos, are the home of sailors who can be found over all the
world.[994] In this appetency for a nautical career, small inshore
islets are often distinguished from the nearby mainland. Nearly all the
masculine population of the Frisian Islands were seamen prior to 1807.
In the eighteenth century a third of the Hamburg vessels were commanded
by captains from the little island of Sylte, and a third of the
Greenland fleet of the Netherlands by natives of Foe