Origin of (he Haivaiian Nation, 49 



Premising that, in such a case, nothing like identity is necessarily 

 to bo expected, — for, according to general experience, the human 

 race was diffused over the globe rather by the migration of whole 

 tribes, than by the emigration of parts of them, — there seems to be 

 no ground for doubting, that the dialects of Polynesia are connected 

 with the languages of the adjacent coasts of Asia. To say nothing 

 of the admitted fact, that the Chinese residents of the Sandwich 

 Islands pick up the Hawaiian with great facility in a short time, the 

 Malayan tongue is universally allowed to be a striking analogy to the 

 language of the groups of the Pacific. To the eye indeed, and per- 

 haps also to the ear, there is said to be a staggering difference in 

 the predominance of vowels on the part of the latter, and of conso- 

 nants on the part of the former. This difference, however, is sus- 

 ceptible of a satisfactory explanation. The concourse of consonants 

 in the Malayan arises, in a great measure, from an admixture of the 

 Arabic, which, to a moral certainty, must have taken place long after 

 Polynesia began to be peopled; and, even if the admixture in ques- 

 tion had been anterior to the colonization of any of the islands, the 

 concourse of consonants just mentioned would, to a considerable ex- 

 tent, have been nominal, inasmuch as the short vowels of the Arabic 

 are rounded without being written. But, further, the peculiarity 

 under consideration of the language of Malacca, supposing it to have 

 been both original and real, would tend rather to support than to im- 

 pugn the foregoing views. The Hawaiian has been shewn to em- 

 body fewer consonants than the Marquesan or the Tahitian, and the 

 Tahitian and the Marquesan again to embody fewer than the Samoan, 

 to the Fejeean, or the Tongan, or the dialect of the New Hebrides, 

 the taboo of the eastern groups, to add another instance to the in- 

 stances already cited, assuming the form of tamboo to the westward. 

 Now, on the very same principle, one ought not to be surprised to 

 find that the consonants become more numerous and more harsh as 

 one approaches to the native seats of a language so widely diffused. 



To conclude this head with one remark more, — if any ethnogra- 

 phic similitudes do exist between America and Polynesia, they may 

 be safely considered as common results of one and the same cause. 

 Though the new world must have received inhabitants from the old 

 across the strait which separates them, just as certainly as if the two 

 were connected by an isthmus, yet it might, in all probability, have 

 received others, and those too, in more regular and continuous 

 streams, along the chain of stepping-stones, which extend from China 

 to the north-west coast, comprehending Japan, the Kurile Islands, 

 and the Aleutian Archipelagoes ; and, to shew that this supposition 

 is far within the limits both of possibility and of probability, a Ja- 

 panese junk, such as has been used since the first settlement of this 

 country, lately found its way to the western shores of the new con- 

 tinent, with a living crew on board, and without the aid of any in- 



VOL. XLIII. NO. LXXXV. — JULY 1847. D 



