We have now completed the circuit of our chief possessions in the Western Pacific. There still remain a few detached islands and groups on its eastern borders which are under the jurisdiction of the High Commissioner. Of these only two are of much interest. Fanning Island lies almost in mid-Pacific, and halfway along the usual route from Sydney to Vancouver. A steamer from Sydney travels 1700 miles to its first stop at Suva; then 1900 on to Fanning Island; thence 3400 to Vancouver, the starting place of the Canadian-Pacific route to Europe. Fanning Island is in consequence the mid-Pacific station of the Pacific cable. The island and its near neighbour, Washington Island, are small coral islands with lagoons, on which coconuts have long been profitably cultivated. Both also have valuable deposits of phosphates, due to the age-long deposit of the droppings of countless seabirds on the decomposing coral. These phosphates, as well as the very abundant coconuts, are already exported, and their value is likely to increase considerably before long. Moreover, the probability that Fanning Island may be made into a shelter and repairing station for vessels crossing the Pacific adds largely to its value as an asset of the Empire. Here are two pictures of 58 the island, typical of the kind of coral atoll which is found 59 isolated in the Pacific, instead of being, as are most of the others which we have seen, a member of a group. Far away to the south-east, almost on the Tropic, and halfway 60 to South America, lies the lonely Pitcairn Island, to which a few other scattered islets, British possessions, are attached. Pitcairn has a population of about a hundred and fifty souls, descendants of the mutineers of the _Bounty_, who settled here with their native wives in 1789. The present occupants represent those who returned after the experiment of removing to Norfolk Island in 1856. They had found themselves overcrowded, since Pitcairn is a tiny island only two miles long by three-quarters wide, rocky and volcanic, though fertile. The island is of great interest from the point of view of the history of the Pacific, since there are remains on it of stone monuments, weapons, and images which prove that even in this distant corner of the ocean some early people must have settled long before the Polynesians. In fact, there are traces of such settlements all over the 61 Pacific, which suggest that the Polynesians themselves are merely modern colonists, occupying the homes of an earlier and perhaps more civilised race. List of Slides [_The titles printed in heavy type are those of the Maps and Illustrations appearing in the book._] LECTURE I _Slide No._