its aboriginal population shows an
affinity to that of the nearest mainland, and this generally in
proportion to geographical proximity. The long line of deposit islands,
built of the off-scourings of the land, and fringing the German and
Netherland coast from Texel to Wangeroog, is inhabited by the same
Frisian folk which occupies the nearby shore. The people of the Channel
Isles, though long subject to England, belong to the Franco-Gallic stock
and the _langue d'oil_ linguistic family of northern France. The native
Canary Islanders, though giving no evidence of previous communication
with any continental land at the time of their discovery, could be
traced, through their physical features, speech, customs and utensils,
to a remote origin in Egypt and the Berber regions of North Africa prior
to the Mohammedan conquest.[838] Sakhalin harbors to-day, besides the
immigrant Russians, five different peoples--Ainos, Gilyaks, Orochons,
Tunguse, and Yakuts, all of them offshoots of tribes now or formerly
found on the Siberian mainland a few miles away.[839]

[Sidenote: Ethnic divergence with increased isolation.]

Where the isolation of the island is more pronounced, owing either to a
broader and more dangerous channel, as in the case of Madagascar and
Formosa, or to the nautical incapacity of the neighboring coast peoples,
as in the case of Tasmania and the Canary Islands, the ethnic influence
of the mainland is weak, and the ethnic divergence of the insular
population therefore more marked, even to the point of total difference
in race. But this is generally a case of survival of a primitive stock
in the protection of an unattractive island offering to a superior
people few allurements to conquest, as illustrated by the ethnic history
of the Andaman and Kurile Isles.

[Sidenote: Differentiation of peoples and civilizations on islands.]

The sea forms the sharpest and broadest boundary; it makes in the island
which it surrounds the conditions for differentiation. Thus while an
insular population is allied in race and civilization to that of the
nearest continent, it nevertheless differs from the same more than the
several sub-groups of its continental kindred differ from each other. In
other words, isolation makes ethnic and cultural divergence more marked
on islands than on continents. The English people, despite their close
kinship and constant communication with the Teutonic peoples of the
European mainland, deviate fro