HE DEEDS of no men in the history

Tof the world are more fascinating

to the imagination than those of the "early navigators," the adventurous explorers of the vast island-dotted expanses of the Pacific Ocean, whose logs offered as exciting reading as the voyage of Sinbad the Sailor, together with far more charming pictures for the fancy to dwell upon.

No fiction ever written can compare in romance appeal to primary human instincts, with the narrative of the first visitors to Otaheite, now Tahiti, and other paradisaical spots in the coral-gemmed "South Seas." These experiences can never be renewed-their story is a closed chapter in the annals of mankind.

But the Pacific Ocean, the area of which exceeds that of all the continents

of the earth put together, while it covers not far from one-third of the entire surface of the globe, still remains in many respects a sea of mystery, calling for long-continued and extensive exploration before man will be able to boast that he really "knows his planet."

At Honolulu last summer the Pan-Pacific Scientific Conference prepared an elaborate program for the future exploration of the great ocean, and the research into the many problems that it presents.

Those who are fortunate enough to embark on some of the expeditions proposed by this conference will have stories to tell little less attractive than the narratives of the first navigators, to which they will serve as apprentices or continuations, re-awakening the sleeping interest of the readers of the old books.

problem of the origin and migrations of the curious race of mankind that the first navigators found inhabiting its great archipelagos.

There is hidden in the South Pacific a spot-Easter Island-a little knob of volcanic rock covered with earth and ornamented with gigantic carved stone figures which, because of the unsolved mystery of their origin, affect the imagination in a manner that recalls the Sphinx, and the Memnan statues of the Nile.

Who were these people that covered their ocean-girted islet with scores of huge carved human figures, often standing on firmly made platforms of platforms of cut-stone blocks?

Some branches of the Polynesian race inhabiting the island groups of the Pacific are among the finest physical specimens of humanity that the earth contains. The average white man cannot compare with them in bodily perfection, and the

fame of the beauty of the women has gone all over the world.

What is the history of this strange race that seems to have dropped out of the clouds upon the face of the mightiest of the oceans, and to have remained attached to its coral-bottomed, palm-shaded, sun-gilded constellations of islands, like humming birds around flower beds?

There they dwelt century after century -and who knows how many thousand years?-scattered about the ocean, far away from its shores, far from the cares and woes of the crowded world of civilized misery.

Nowhere are the native energies of the planet-volcanic forces, upheavals and subsidences so powerfully displayed as in the Pacific. It is an ocean of unacquired knowledge-a film, 64,000,000 square miles in extent, whose wonders are only beginning to be displayed.