Such sites suffice for mere trading posts, but are inadequate for the larger social group of a real colony.  The early Greek colonists, with their predilection for insular locations, recognized this limitation and offset it by the occupation of a strip of the nearest mainland, cultivated and defended by fortified posts, as an adjunct to the support of the islands.  Such a subsidiary coastal hem was called a Paraea.  The ancient Greek colonies on the islands of Thasos and Samothrace each possessed such a Paraea.[961] The Aeolian inhabitants of Tenedos held a strip of the opposite Troad coast north of Cape Lekton, while those of Lesbos appropriated the south coast of the Troad.[962] In the same way Tarentum and Syracuse, begun on inshore islands, soon overflowed on to the mainland.  Sometimes the island site is abandoned altogether and the colony transferred to the mainland.  The ancient Greek colony of Cyrene had an initial existence on the island of Platea just off the Libyan coast, but, not flourishing there, was moved after an interval of several years to the African mainland, where “the sky was perforated” by the mountains of Barca.[963] De Monts’ colony was removed from its island to Port Royal in Nova Scotia.

[Sidenote:  Precocious development of island agriculture.]

Where an island offers in its climate and soil conditions favorable to agriculture, tillage begins early to assume an intensive, scientific character, to supply the increasing demand for food.  The land, fixed in the amount of area, must be made elastic in its productivity by the application of intelligence and industry.  Hence in island habitats, an early development of agriculture, accompanied by a parallel skill in exploiting the food resources of the sea, is a prevailing feature.  In Oceanica, agriculture is everywhere indigenous, but shows greatest progress in islands like Tonga and Fiji, where climate and soil are neither lavish nor niggardly in their gifts, but yield a due return for the labor of tillage.  The Society[964] and Samoan Islands, where nature has been more prodigal, rank lower in agriculture, though George Forster found in Tahiti a relatively high degree of cultivation.[965] The small, rocky, coralline Paumotas rank lower still, but even here plantains, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, yams, taro and solanum are raised.  The crowded atolls of the Gilbert group show pains-taking tillage.  Here we find coco-palms with their roots fertilized with powdered pumice, and taro cultivated in trenches excavated for the purpose and located near the lagoons, so that the water may percolate through the coral sand to the thirsty roots.[966] To lonely Easter Isle nature has applied a relentless lash.  At the time of Cook’s visit it was woodless and boatless except for one rickety canoe, and therefore was almost excluded from the food supplies of the sea.  Hence its destitute natives, by means of careful and often ingenious tillage, made its parched and rocky slopes support excellent plantations of bananas and sugar-cane.[967]