Other-waters

The term Spice Islands is most commonly used to refer to the Maluku Islands (formerly the Moluccas), which lie on the equator, between the Celebes and the New Guinea islands southeast Asia), though it has also been used in reference to other islands known for their spice production, notably the Tanzanian group consisting of Zanzibar, Mafia Island and Pemba.

The Moluccas were, until the late 18th century, the only source of economically significant spices including clove, nutmeg and mace. Archaeological and linguistic evidence places Spice Island traders within a trading circuit reaching as far as mainland India around 200 BC.

The Canary Islands are supposed to have given birth to the Greek myth of the Garden of Hesperides.

The islands were named Canaria (Latin canis, dog) because of the descriptions of the large numbers of wild dogs roaming the islands, first reported by the Roman scholar Pliny. The bird canary was named after the islands.

The Republic of the Fiji Islands occupies an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Vanuatu, west of Tonga and south of Tuvalu.

Melanesian and Polynesian peoples settled the Fijian islands some 3,500 years ago.

Dutch navigator Abel Tasman was the first European to discover the Fiji islands in 1643 when he sighted Vanua Levu and the North Taveuni group.

Vancouver Island is a large island in British Columbia, Canada, off the Pacific coast. It is, in fact, the largest island on the western side of the Americas at 32,134 square kilometers.

The island has been inhabited by humans for some eight thousand years. By the late 1700s, the primary Indian nations there were the Nuu-Chah-Nulth (Nootka) on the west coast, Salish on the south and east coasts, and the Kwakiutl in the centre of the island and the north