The Association of Pacific Coast Geographers

THE ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS Ninth Annual Meeting, Seattle, Washington, September 20-21, 1946 After a four-year interruption, the ninth annual meeting of the Association was held at Seattle. Washington, September 20 and 21, 1946. Three half-day sessions for the presentation of papers were held in room 401, Social Sciences Building, University of Washington, in the forenoon and afternoon of Friday, September 20, and the forenoon of Saturday, September 21. Because of the death of the President, Eliot Mears, the VicePresident , John B. Appleton, became President and presided at these meetings . He delivered the presidential address at the annual dinner, which was held in the Meany Hotel, Seattle, on Friday evening, September 20. Program, with Abstracts of Papers Presented (Papers published in full in the foregoing pages are not abstracted here.) Friday Morning Session, September 20: Plantation Agriculture in the New Hebrides . Michael McIntyre, University of Washington. Seattle. Abstract: Three plantation products, copra, cacao, and coffee, account for 95 per cent of the value of exports from the New Hebrides. These three crops have achieved preponderance in the economy of the islands through a process of elimination of others cultivated in the past, notably cotton and rubber. Plantations vary greatly in area, but in operation differ principally in the degree to which production is restricted to one or the other of the three main crops. The French planters display more inclination toward diversification of their production than do the British. A profile inland from the shore, near which most of the plantations are situated, provides a sequence of sites appropriate to the three principal crops. Near the shore is the ssndy soil and high water table required by the coconut palm, and farther inland are the loamy soil and the shade of forest trees that are suitable for cacao and coffee. Drying is a conspicuous part of the preparation for market of all three of the main plantation products. The devices used in the New Hebrides for drying copra and cacao and coffee beans are rather crude, so that the marketed products are not of the first quality. Coconut husks are the fuel used in all the dryers. Conditions with respect to plantation labor are extremely unsatisfactory for both laborers and owners. Ruthless exploitation of native labor in the past makes the natives reluctant to accept employment on the plantations. The native population, moreover, is diminishing . Both British and French planters have appealed to their respective governments for permission to import labor from Asia. The British government has steadfastly refused to allow such importation , but since the early nineteentwenties Tonkinese have been brought from Indo-China to work on French plantations. These Tonkinese are kept in peonage, which is enforced by the local administration. The labor supply thus provided gives the French planters an advantage over their British fellows, and in consequence their number is increasing in relation to the British. Midway Islands. Estelle Rankin, University of Washington, Seattle. Abstract: The Midway Island group is an atoll, the surrounding reef of which has the form of a rounded triangle five to six miles across. There is a wide breach in the reef on its northwestern side, and a narrow one on the south. The two islands proper in the group, Sand Island and Eastern Island, lie close inside the reef on the southern side of the atoll. Sand Island is about two miles long and one mile wide, and has an area of 850 acres. Its highest point is about 43 feet above sea level. Eastern Island, which liss about one and one-half miles east of Sand Island, has e triangular outline, is a little over a mile in length and three-fourths of a mile wide at the base. It contains about 328 acres, and is somewhat lower than 32 Yearbook of the Association Vol. 9 Sand Island. The surfaces of both islands originally consisted of sand. Welles Harbor, in the southwestern part of the area enclosed by the reef, west of Sand Island, originally had a depth of about 14 feet. The United States took formal possession of the Midway group in 1867. It became a cable station in 1904, thereby acquiring as permanent...