the prodigious amount of human suffering at which the South Sea Islands, situated as some of them are at vast distances from the nearest islands, must have been originally peopled in the course of long ages past. Where one canoe, in the circumstances I have stated, was fortunate enough to reach some previously unknown land in the vast ocean, we may conclude that many must have been lost, after scenes of bloodshed and cannibalism had been transacted on board them at the very idea of which the imagination revolts with horror.

The next question in this inquiry is from what portion of the habitable globe has the Polynesian race been derived, and with what other family or tribe of the earth's inhabitants does it exhibit any affinity?

I would observe, therefore, before attempting to give a direct answer to this question, that there are certain writers who maintain that the Polynesians could not possibly have come from the westward or the continent of Asia from the prevalence of the easterly or trade winds of both hemispheres.

66

66

De Zuniga, a Spanish writer of some celebrity, and the author of a history of the Philippine Islands, who is followed by Mr. Ellis, long a missionary in the South Sea Islands, and the author of an interesting work entitled "Polynesian Researches," maintains that the Polynesians could never have made their way across the Pacific from the westward, in consequence of the uniform prevalence of the easterly trade wind. But the testimony of that eminent and lamented navigator La Perouse is decisive as to the invalidity of such an objection. Westerly winds," says that eminent navigator, are at least as frequent as those from the eastward in the vicinity of the Equator, in a zone of seven or eight degrees north and south; and they" (that is the winds in the equatorial regions) "are so variable that it is very little more difficult to make a voyage to the eastward than to the westward."* To the same effect, Captain (afterwards Admiral) Hunter, the second Governor of New South Wales, observes, in the narrative of his voyage from Port Jackson to Batavia, in the year 1791:-"It was very clear to me, from the winds we had experienced since we came to the northward of the Line, that at this time of the year (the end of July), and generally during the height of the south-west monsoon in the China seas, these (westerly) winds do sometimes extend far to the eastward of the Philippine Islands, and frequently blow in very heavy gales." For my own part, as to the alleged uniformity of the trade winds in the equatorial regions, the second time I crossed the Line from the northward, our vessel lost the north-east trade wind as high as the fourteenth degree of north latitude; and in crossing the Equator from the southward on a subsequent voyage (in September, 1833), we experienced a south-westerly gale of several days' continuance, after losing the south-east trade wind, which carried us as far as the sixth degree of north latitude. Nay, I have been informed by a nautical gentleman of experience that he once encountered a south

*La Perouse's Voyages, chap. XXV.

westerly gale of twelve days' continuance considerably within the tropics.*

Having thus met and disposed of the preliminary objection as to the impossibility of the Polynesians making their way to the eastward in the face of the easterly trade winds of both hemispheres, I proceed to observe that the Polynesian race exhibits the clearest evidence of an Asiatic origin, in the following, as well as in various other particulars :

I. Distinction of caste-the most ancient and most remarkable feature of Asiatic society-prevails in certain of the groups of Polynesia; for in certain other groups it does not exist, for reasons which I have already indicated. In Tahiti, or the Society Islands, it was formerly carried to so ridiculous an extent in the case of the royal family-all the members of which were regarded as sacred in the highest Tahitian sense of the word—that whatever any of the princes of the blood happened to touch became sacred also. If the king entered a house, the owner had to abandon it forthwith. If he walked on a footpath, it was death for a plebeian to walk on it afterwards. In benevolent consideration, therefore, of the welfare and convenience of his subjects, his Tahitian majesty, having no state carriage, was graciously pleased to be carried on men's shoulders, whenever he wished to see the world, lest he should otherwise consecrate his own highways, and render them unavailable in future for his subjects. In the Friendly Islands the several castes are still better defined; and as in India the Brahmin, or priestly, caste ranks highest, insomuch that the Grand Lama of these islands-the Tooi Tonga, as he is calledtakes precedence even of the king.

The castes in India are:-1. The Brahmin, or priestly caste, whose office is to offer sacrifices, to teach the Veda, to offer gifts, and to receive presents.

2. The Kshutriya, or soldier caste, whose office is to protect the country and the Brahmins.

3. The Vishya, or merchant caste, whose office is to keep cattle, to carry on trade, to cultivate the land.

4. The Shoodra, or servile caste, whose office is to serve the Brahmins. And persons of the higher castes must not communicate with the lower in marriage, in eating, or in family friendship, on pain of degradation and the loss of all earthly connections.

In the Friendly Islands, in which the Polynesian system seems to have retained much more of its ancient features than in most of the other groups, a similar, if not the same division of society obtains. In these islands the highest caste is in like manner :

1. The priestly caste, the heads of which are supposed to be descended from the gods: they receive presents from the lower castes, and enjoy peculiar privileges; and the other islanders testify their

There is yet another feature of the Pacific that is favourable to passages Eastward, and this is the Easterly Current found near the Equator, a happy provision for navigation by the Great Creator, found equally in the Atlantic Ocean.-ED.

respect towards them by addressing them in a sort of Sanscrit or sacred language, which is not used on inferior subjects.

2. The egi, or nobles, whose office is to preside in war, and to be the rulers of the country; the king himself being of this caste.

3. The matabooles, or gentlemen, whose office it is to act as companions and counsellors to the nobles, to be masters of ceremonies and orators at public assemblies. The cadets or younger brothers and sons of this caste practice mechanical arts under the name of mooas.

4. The tooas, or lowest caste, consisting of common labourers, cooks, servants. And, in like manner as in India, the repugnance towards any intermingling of the castes is so strong that if an individual of one of the higher castes has children by a wife or concubine of one of the lower, the children must be put to death to prevent the degradation of the family.

II. The singular institution of taboo, which contains universally in the South Sea Islands, is evidently also of Asiatic origin. The word taboo is nearly equivalent to the Latin sacer, and the Greek anathema, signifying either sacred or accursed, holy or unclean. Under the Levitical law, the show bread was taboo, or forbidden to all but the priests. The leper was also taboo, for his touch communicated ceremonial pollution. The Jews pronounced the former holy-the Romans would have said, sacer diis cælestibus; the latter they pronounced unclean-the Romans would have said, sacer diis infernis. In short, the Polynesian taboo extends to persons, places, and things; and whatever is subjected either to its temporary or to its permanent operation thereby acquires a character of sacredness in the eye of the South Sea islanders, which it were death to disregard. In New Zealand, for instance, a woman engaged in nursing is taboo, and forbidden, under pain of death, to touch the food which she eats with her own hands; and I recollect the case of a woman who had violated this prohibition, about forty years since, by eating a piece of fern root in the mode forbidden by the law, being killed and eaten.

In some cases, indeed, the taboo appears to have been a wise and politic institution. After those national festivals that are so frequent in the South Sea Islands, and at which such vast quantities of provisions are consumed as to threaten a general famine, taboo is laid upon certain articles of food, perhaps for a period of six months, and a supply is thus reserved for the future. In the islands towards the north certain fruit-bearing trees, and in New Zealand certain plats of kumara or sweet potatoes are tabooed every season. The produce of these trees or plats is gathered in the time of harvest, and distributed among the people. And in New Zealand, evidently to guard against the events of war and the pressure of famine, the seed potatoes are always separated from the rest of the stock at the time of ingathering, and placed in a storehouse which is tabooed; and any person found stealing from such a house is punished with death.

It may doubtless be difficult to account for so singular an institution as the Polynesian taboo; but its Asiatic origin is evident and indubitable. Its influence and operation may be traced from the Straits

ORIGIN OF THE POLYNESIAN NATION.

of Malacca across the whole continent of Asia to the Sea of Tiberias
In Ionia, in Hindostan, and in Tahiti, the
and the isles of Greece.
person, the place, or the thing that was subjected to the influence of
the mysterious taboo, was thenceforth, in the words of the poet,
"abstracted from the
auguriis patrum, et prisca formidine sacrum,
common usages of life, by a superstitious dread, the result of ancient
religious observances."

III. Numerous Asiatic customs and observances are practised in the South Sea Islands as well as in the Indian Archipelago, which closely adjoins the continent of Asia, and must therefore have been originally peopled from it.

To instance only a few of these-in Tahiti, as in Bengal, women are not allowed to eat with their husbands, or to partake of certain articles of food which are indiscriminately eaten by their lords and masters. The general posture in sitting is that of the Asiatics-on the ground, cross-legged; and in the Friendly Islands, as in the kingdom of Siam and in other Eastern countries, it is deemed most respectful to sit in the presence of the sovereign. The New Zealanders and Friendly Islanders salute each other by touching noses-a ceremony which is not unknown in Eastern Asia; and in the island of Tonga there is a game called hico, which consists in throwing up and keeping in the air a number of balls, as is still practised by the Indian and Chinese jugglers.

Nay, similar modes of thinking, and corresponding peculiarities of action, are found to prevail both in Asia and in the South Sea Islands. The New Zealanders, for example, uniformly ascribe internal maladies to the anger of some atua or divinity, who is supposed to be gnawing the patient's viscera. In such cases, therefore, instead of administering anything in the shape of medicine, the priest or soothsayer is consulted, who, after certain divinations, probably pronounces the patient given. over to the anger of the god, and then tabooes or excommunicates him; after which he is removed to a solitary house in the neighbourhood, and left to die, like the aged or sick Hindoo on the banks of the Ganges; no person being permitted to hold further communication with him, or to supply him with provisions. It is singular, indeed, that a similar idea, and a somewhat similar practice, in regard to the treatment of diseases, should have obtained even among the ancient Greeks. We learn from Homer that when the Grecian army under the walls of Troy was afflicted with an epidemical disease, Machaon and Podalirius, the surgeons-general of the forces, were not asked their opinion in the council of the chiefs, either as to its cause or to the treatment to be adopted for its cure. Chalcas, the soothsayer, was the only person consulted respecting it; and, like a genuine New Zealand ariki, that very sensible person ascribed the disease to the vengeance of the far-darting Apollo.

In the Fiji Islands, the principal wife must be strangled at the husband's death, and buried along with him-a practice evidently borrowed from the suttees of Hindostan. The same practice obtained also in the Friendly Islands, in regard to the principal wife of the Toqi-Tonga, or chief priest of these islands.

It is observed by Mr. Marsden in his History of Sumatra (page 43), "That the original clothing of the Sumatrans is the same with that found by navigators in the South Sea Islands, and in Europe generally called Otaheitan cloth." And in the account of his voyage from Port Jackson to Batavia, in the year 1791, Captain Hunter observes, in regard to the Duke of York's Island, situated to the westward of New Ireland, "that most of the natives chew the beetle (betel), and with it used the chenam and a leaf, as practised in the East Indies, by which the mouth appeared very red, and their teeth, after a time, became black." 66 It may be allowed me to remark," says Mr. Marsden, when speaking of the inhabitants of the Pelew Islands, "that these are the most eastern people of whom the practice of chewing betel has been mentioned; nor indeed does it appear that either the nut (areca) or the leaf (piper betel) is the produce of the South Sea Islands."* island, however, in which the practice has been observed by Captain Hunter, the highly-competent observer I have just cited, is situated 20 degrees of longitude, or about 1,400 miles eastward of the Pelew Islands-a most remarkable and instructive fact, as it shows us, beyond the possibility of a doubt, from whence those peculiar customs and observances of the South Sea Islanders, which they practise in common with the inhabitants of Eastern Asia and the Indian Archipelago, have been derived, and how they have travelled to the eastward in ages past.

The

Captain Hovell, late of the Young Australian, and now a prisoner at Berrima, has told me that he had observed the practice of chewing the betel root in Bank's Islands, situated in 170° W. longitude, and in 13° S. latitude, that is considerably farther east than the island mentioned by Admiral Hunter.

The general tradition of the South Sea Islanders, I mean of those inhabiting the groups of the Southern Pacific, is that the first inhabitants of the islands came from the northward; Bolotoo, the Paradise of the Friendly Islands, being supposed to be in that direction. In confirmation of this remark, it may be observed that the word Tonga, the name of the principal island of that group-signifies east both in the Polynesian and Chinese languages; for that designation will doubtless appear peculiarly appropriate as the name of an island which its first discoverers and inhabitants had reached from the westward.

IV. But the evidence afforded by the Polynesian language, in regard to the origin of the South Sea Islanders, is still stronger, and less open to objection. "Language," says the celebrated Horne Tooke, "cannot lie; and from the language of every nation, we may with certainty collect its origin." "The similitude and derivation of languages," observes Dr. Johnson, "afford the most indubitable proof of the traduction of nations and the genealogy of mankind; they add physical certainty to historical evidence, and often supply the only evidences of ancient emigrations and of the revolutions of ages, which have left no written monuments behind them."

* Marsden's Miscellaneous Works. London, 1834.