The ethnological features of Micronesia are much more definite than the geographical, for its populations form one great branch of the fair Polynesian race, distinguished from the other by well-marked differences in appearance, language, and institutions. Its ethnological relations are not thoroughly understood. The proximity of Japan and the Philippines on the west and of the Papuan and South Polynesian islands on the south and south-east suggests, what in fact we find, a combination of elements in different degrees of fusion. In some places the oblique Mongolian eye is noticed, and (along with certain Indo-Chinese customs) there is often a scantiness of beard and general “Malay” look which increases westwards, and seems to imply relations with the archipelago subsequent to the departure thence of the pure Polynesians. In the Gilberts the traces of Polynesian (Samoan) influences are evident, and are confirmed by tradition. Among the Carolines and the Marshalls darker and more savage communities are found, suggesting a Melanesian element, which is further traceable in the Ebon (Marshall) and other languages.

Each of the four groups, from long isolation, has developed peculiarities of its own. The most advanced were the “Chamorros” of the Ladrones, owing to the greater natural resources of the islands, and perhaps more frequent contact with influences from the west; but as a separate people they no longer exist, having been nearly exterminated by the Spaniards in the 17th century. Next in advancement come the Carolines. The general type is a well-proportioned rather slightly built figure, with small and regular features; head high and well-proportioned, but forehead rather retreating, and narrow at the temples; cheek bones and chin slightly prominent; colour somewhat darker than the Polynesians, the Marshalls being darker and more vigorous than the Carolines, while the Gilbert type is still darker and coarser. The upper class greatly surpasses the common people in physique and intelligence.

There is a peculiar division of society into septs or clans, the membership of which constitutes the closest tie. Persons of the same sept must not intermarry, and when two islands or communities meet in war the members of one sept, however widely separated by distance of space or time, will not injure or fight with each other. Each community is usually composed (but there are local differences) of—(1) an upper class of chiefs, from among whom the head (tamol or ⅛os) is chosen; (2) a lower but still noble class; and (3) common people, mostly without rights of property. These last are only allowed one wife. Assemblies of the chiefs everywhere limit the kingly authority. In the Marshalls the sovereign has lost his control over many of the atolls, and in the Gilberts the above distinctions have nearly disappeared; the headship has lapsed, and, especially in the southern islands, the man of largest substance is the most powerful, and sometimes establishes a local supremacy. Here and there are traces, as in Tonga, of a spiritual sovereign, the descendants probably of a conquered dynasty. Succession is through the female side, which assures to women a certain position, and leads besides to some curious results (see paper by Kubary in Das Ausland, 1880, No. 27). The upper class are the keepers of traditions, boat-builders, leaders of expeditions; tattooing is generally done by them, the amount increasing with a man’s rank; the custom here still has definite religious associations. Both sexes are tattooed. The people are singularly amiable and well disposed, but will repay ill usage with treachery. The women (although chastity is not expected before marriage) are somewhat more moral than the Polynesians, and are treated with respect, as are the aged. The natives are polite and hospitable to strangers (except on the poorer and ruder islands), bright and intelligent, active traders, expert cultivators and fishermen. They have a hand-loom from which beautiful fabrics of banana, hibiscus, and other fibres are produced. The Marshall Islanders are the boldest and most skilful navigators in the Pacific. Their voyages of many months’ duration, in great canoes sailing with outrigger to windward, well-provisioned, and depending on the skies for fresh water, help to show how the Pacific was colonized. They have a sort of chart, tnedo, of small sticks tied together, representing the positions of islands and the directions of the winds and currents. A two-edged weapon, of which the blade is of sharks’ teeth, and a defensive armour of braided sennit, are also peculiar to the islands; a large adze, made of the Tridacna gigas, was formerly used in the Carolines, probably by the old builder race.

The languages of Micronesia, though grammatically alike, differ widely in their vocabularies. They have the chief characteristics of the Polynesian, with Malay affinities, and peculiarities such as the use of suffixes and inseparable pronouns and, as in Tagal, of the infix to denote changes in the verb; in the west groups there is a tendency to closed syllables and double consonants, and a use of the palatals ch, j, sh, the dental th, and s (the last perhaps only in foreign words), which is alien to the Polynesian. These letters are wanting in the Gilbert language, which differs considerably from all the others, and has much greater affinities with the Polynesian.

The religious myths are generally identifiable with the Polynesian, but a belief in the gods proper is overshadowed by a general deification of ancestors, who are supposed from time to time to occupy certain blocks of stone, set up near the family dwelling, and surrounded by circles of smaller ones. These stones are anointed with oil, and worshipped with prayer and offerings, and are also used for purposes of divination, in which, and in various omens, there is a general belief. In the Marshalls, in place of these stones, certain palm trees are similarly enclosed. The spirits also sometimes inhabit certain birds or fishes, which are then tabu, as food, to the family; but they will help to catch them for others. All this closely recalls the hancars or ancestral images of New Guinea. Temples are very rare, though these blocks of coral are sometimes surrounded by a roofless enclosure opening to the west. The bodies of the dead, and sometimes even of the sick, are despatched to sea westwards, with certain rites; those of the chiefs, however, are buried, for the order has something essentially divine about it; their bodies therefore are sacred, and their spirits naturally assume the position above described. Such a belief greatly strengthens the king’s authority, for the spirits of his ancestors are necessarily more powerful than any other spirits. Thus too it comes that the chiefs, and all belonging to them, are tabu as regards the common people. There are various other subjects and occasions of tabu, but the institution has not the oppressive and all-pervading character which it has in Polynesia. Its action is often economical or charitable, e.g., the ripening cocoa-nuts are tabu as long as the breadfruit lasts, thus securing the former for future use; or it is put on after a death, and the nuts thus saved are given to the family— a kindness to them, and a mark of respect for the dead.

The flora of the Gilbert and Marshall groups is of the usual oceanic character, with close Indo-Malay affinities. It is much poorer than that of the Carolines, with its Moluccan and Philippine elements, and this again is surpassed by that of the Ladrones. In the Gilberts the scattered woods of cocoa-palm and Pandanus have little undergrowth, while the south Marshalls, being within the belt of constant precipitation, have a dense growth of (mostly) low trees and shrubs, with here and there a tropical luxuriance and variety unusual on atolls. The Pandanus grows wild profusely, and is of exceptional importance, being the chief staple of food, so that the cocoa-nut, which, however, flourishes chiefly in the Gilberts, is used mainly to produce oil for exportation. The bread-fruit glows chiefly in the south Marshalls. The taro {Arum cordi/olium and others) is cultivated laboriously, deep trenches being cut in the solid rock for its irrigation, but this and other plants of cultivation, and indeed the vegetation generally, fall oif in number and quality northwards. Various vegetables are grown on soil imported for the purpose. Marine plants are rare. Wilkes found on Makin Island, Gilbert group, a “fruit resembling the gooseberry,” called “teiparu,” from which a preserve is made. This seems very like the tipari or Cape gooseberry of India {Physalis peruviana'). And their karaka, a drink made from the sap of the flower-stalk of the cocoa-palm (unfermented before the arrival of Europeans), recalls the arrack of southern Asia.

The fauna, like the flora, becomes poorer eastwards, birds being much more numerous on the high islands than on the atolls, where the few are chiefly aquatic. On Bonabe (Puynipet) out of twenty-nine species eleven are sea birds, and of the remaining eighteen seven are peculiar to the island. From the Pelews fifty-six species are recorded ( twelve peculiar), and from the neighbouring Mackenzie group (Ulithi) twenty (six peculiar). Yet curiously no species is recorded common to these two groups and peculiar to them. The common fowl is found everywhere, wild or tame, and in some places is kept for its feathers only. The rat and a Pteropus are the only indigenous land mammals. The Indian crocodile is found as far east as the Pelews. There are five or six lizards, including a Gecko and Ablephorus. Insects are numerous, but of few kinds. Scorpions and centipedes are common, but are said to be harmless.

The houses in the Gilberts and Marshalls (much less elaborate than in the Carolines) consist merely of a thatched roof resting on posts or on blocks of coral about 3 feet high, with a floor at that level, which is reached from an opening in the centre. On this the principal people sleep, and it serves as a storehouse inaccessible to rats, which infest all the islands.

The Marshall archipelago consists of two nearly parallel chains of atolls, from 100 to 300 miles apart, the west known as Ralik, the east as Ratak. They lie between 4° 30' and 12° N., and between 165° 15' and 172° 15' E., and run about N.N.W. and S.S.E. They were discovered in 1529 by Saavedra, who, observing the fine tattooing of the inhabitants (the first allusion to the practice in the Pacific), called them Los Pintados. Among modern voyagers Wallis first visited them in 1767; Captains Marshall and Gilbert reached them in 1788, and Kotzebue (1816) explored them more thoroughly. Each group contains fifteen or sixteen atolls, which range from 2 to 50 miles in circumference. An anomalous feature is reported on some of them, viz., that the greater proportion of land, or at all events of soil, is not found as usual on the windward side of the lagoon, for the prevailing north-east wind sweeps, it is said, the materials of which the soil of such islands is composed across to the lee side. Jaluit Island is the commercial emporium of the whole region. There is a curious tradition on Ebon Island of the Darwinian fact that the atoll once formed the barrier reef of an island now sunk beneath the lagoon. The population of Ratak is about 6000, of Ralik 4000; there is little intercourse between the two groups.

The Gilbert archipelago, discovered by Byron in 1765, is geographically a south continuation of the Marshalls, the channel separating them being 50 leagues wide. It lies between 2° 40' S. and 3° 20' N., and between 172° 30' and 177° 15' E., and contains sixteen atolls, not including two hilly islands, Banaba and Nawodo, which lie 5° to 6° to the west. Several have good anchorages inside the lagoon, with entrances on the lee side. On some the lee or west reef is wanting, owing to the abrading force of the west storms. During these large trees are washed ashore, their roots containing pieces of fine basalt, of which implements are made. There is a far larger proportion of land to submerged reef and lagoon than in the Marshalls, the land sometimes rising 20 feet above the sea, whereas in the Marshalls the average level of the reef rock is less than a foot above the surface; but, though the supply of fresh water is exceptionally great, in fact enough for the luxury of a bath, the soil (especially in the south) is very much less productive. Yet the population, about 50,000, is exceptionally dense. The usual scattered houses are replaced by compact rows of roofs which, shaded by cocoa-palm, and each with its boat-shed below, line the shore. Their numbers are unchecked either by the constant practice of abortion or by fighting, to which they are much addicted, their weapons being more formidable than those of their neighbours. This exceptional vigour may be due to the decidedly hybrid character of the race. Hawaiian missionaries, under American superintendence, have laboured here since 1857.

See also Findlay's Sailing Directions for the North Pacific ; Roper's North Pacific Pilot and Nautical Magazine, vols, xxxi. and xxxv. Other authorities are Gerland in Waitz's Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vol. v.: Meini<ke. Die Inseln des Stillen Oceans; Hale’s Ethnography and Philology of Wilkes's U. S. Exploring Expedition; Kotzehue and Chaιnisso, Entdeckungsreise in die Sudsee; Proc. Zool. Soc,, 1872 and 1877.