Channels of the Hawaiian Islands 7 miles. ʻAlalākeiki means "crying baby." The Kealaikahiki Channel is the channel between Lānaʻi and Kahoʻolawe. It literally means "the road to Tahiti"; if one takes a bearing off of Kealaikahiki Point on Kahoʻolawe while in the channel and heads directly straight, one arrives, more or less, in Tahiti. In practice, however, Polynesian navigators probably did not quite ply a straight route to Tahiti. The channel is 17 miles wide. The ʻAuʻau Channel is one of the most protected areas of ocean in the Hawaiian Islands, lying between Lānaʻi and Maui. The channel is also protected by Molokaʻi to the
History of the British Virgin Islands The Arawak inhabited the islands until the 15th century, when they were displaced by the more aggressive Caribs, a tribe from the Lesser Antilles islands. The Caribbean Sea is named for these people. None of the later European visitors to the Virgin Islands reported encountering Amerindians in what would later be the British Virgin Islands. Christopher Columbus did have a hostile encounter with the Carib natives of St. Croix. Comparatively little is known about the early inhabitants of this territory specifically (as opposed to the Arawak generally). The largest excavations of Arawak pottery have been found around Belmont and Smuggler's