lities, including British, Germans,
Scandinavians, Danes, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Australians of
European origin, besides 256 South Sea Islanders, Papuans, Africans,
Philippines, Chinese and other Asiatics.[861]

[Sidenote: Mixed population of island markets.]

Antiquity shows the same thing on a smaller scale, which grew, however,
with the expansion of the circle of commerce. Ancient Aegina in the
Saronic Gulf received inhabitants from Crete, Argos, Epidaurus in
eastern Argolis and Athens; it became a central maritime market and its
people sea-traders, whose goods of a certain small kind became known as
"Aegina wares."[862] Delos at the crossroads of the Aegean was the center
of longer radii. It became the inn for travelers and merchants sailing
from Asia and Egypt to Italy and Greece, and hence drew to itself the
trade and people of the whole Mediterranean basin.[863] The northwestern
Indian Ocean had a similar emporium in the ancient Dioscoridis,
(Sokotra) which focused on itself the trade between Arabia and eastern
Africa.[864]

Ceylon's location made it in ancient and medieval times the common
meeting place for Arab traders from the west and Chinese merchants from
the east; it thus became the Sicily of the semi-enclosed North Indian
Ocean. To-day its capital Colombo is "the Clapham Junction of the Eastern
Seas," where passengers change steamers for China, India and Australia;
a port of call for vessels passing from the Straits of Malacca to the
Persian Gulf or Mediterranean. Hence Ceylon's solid nucleus of
Singhalese and Tamil population, protected against absorption by the
large area of the island (25,365 square miles) is interspersed in the
coastal districts with Arabs, Portuguese, Eurasians dating from the old
Portuguese occupation, and some ten thousand Europeans.[865] The island
of Gotland, located at the crossroads of the Baltic, was early adopted
by the Hanseatic merchants as their maritime base for the exploitation
of Swedish, Finnish, and Russian trade. Here were "peoples of divers
tongues," so the old chronicles say, while the archeological finds of
Byzantine, Cufic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon and German coins testify to the
wide circle of trade whose radii focused at this nodal point of the
Baltic.[866]

[Sidenote: Significant location of island way stations.]

The great importance of such islands has been due solely to their
location. Their size and resources are negligible quantities, but their
n