Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/316

304 cannon on the Kirgheez and the Bashkeers. The Calmucks recovered their coolness, defended themselves, and all that remained of these people were saved. The emperor immediately gave them some food and clothing; then he gave them the country which is occupied by their descendants at the present time.

I will add that Kien-Long caused a column to be erected on the spot where the encounter had taken place. On this column we read an inscription, in very simple words, recording how Kien-Long saved an entire nation. The inscription ends with these words: "Let this place ever be regarded as holy." Gentlemen, I cannot be deceived in saying that you will join in this prayer of one of the greatest sovereigns of China. The place where a nation has been saved merits consecration much more than that where the most brilliant victory has been gained at the price of thousands of human lives.

The hour passes, and I cannot enlarge upon this interesting question of migration as much as I intended. I will content myself with citing one example of migration by sea. It is still more striking, as it bears upon a race constantly referred to when it is wished to prove that men were born where we find them. At the present time, the part of the globe of which I am about to speak is one of those where the peopling by migration is most completely demonstrated. I mean Polynesia.

Here is Polynesia. You see that it occupies a good part of the great Pacific Ocean, and that it is included in a triangle whose sides, from the Sandwich Islands to New Zealand and to the isle of Pâques, measure, in round numbers, 1,800 leagues. The islands dispersed in this immense space are scarcely as much as a grain of sand in the Place de la Concorde. Several among them are smaller than Paris. The isle of Pâques in particular, which forms one of the extremities of the triangle, has precisely the extent of the city-wall of ancient Paris before the annexation of the suburbs—that is to say, 25 kilometres (15½ miles) in circumference.

You understand what in this vast sea an isle of these dimensions amounts to; and there are others much smaller, which are likewise peopled. The argument drawn from this situation would seem, then, to have great force. How do you suppose, says one, that savages, having no improved means of navigation, have been able to cross such spaces? Why were they not lost in this vast ocean before finding these small isles?

Unfortunately, I cannot go into the detail of facts to show you how inexact is this a priori reasoning. I will only say that at the present time we know not only that the people of Polynesia came from some other place, but that they came from the Indian Archipelago. We know, besides, what has been the general course of their migrations, and can trace them on the map. Further, we have been able to determine the epoch when they took place, relying on precise